LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf,.i±.... 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Sto« StM<tettt5' levies of Hixglislx &lKSsics. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WRITINGS 



OF 



JOHN RUSKIN. 



BY 

VIDA D. SCUDDER. M.A. 

Wellesley College. 







le^ 



LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN. 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 



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Copyright, 1890, 
By Leach, Shewell, & Sanborn. 



C. J. PETERS & SON, 
Typographers and Electrotypers. 



Press of Berwick & Smith. 



PREFACE. , 



This selection from Euskin's writings is intended 
primarily for the use of students : students whether in 
the school, the college, or the great University of the 
World. There are many volumes of passages from 
Ruskin chosen for their beauty, or for their bearing on 
some special theme : it is believed that no collection has 
existed which aimed to present a suggestive summary of 
all the varying phases of his work, and to initiate the 
serious student into the most valuable portions of his 
thought. Yet there is perhaps no author more helpful, 
not only for the intrinsic beauty and value of his writ- 
ings, but for his vital relation to the most interesting 
parts of the life of the century. And, if the function of 
the middleman is ever legitimate in literature, it is 
surely legitimate in the case of a writer like Ruskin ; 
for the very voluminousness of his works stands be- 
tween him and popular knowledge. 

The principles by which the selections have been 
chosen are, first, to find passages fairly typical of 
Ruskin's most characteristic modes of thought and to 



iv PREFACE. 

place them, in just proportion, under clearly defined 
heads: second, to represent as many of his books as 
possible : third, to avoid, so far as consistent with the 
other two principles, passages hackneyed from use in 
other collections. The text of the book has been care- 
fully corrected, sentence by sentence, by Ruskin's author- 
ized English edition, and it is hoped that few errors 
will be found. 

Volumes of selections are poor things at best, yet they 
too may have their place if they make manifest beauty, 
suggest wealth of thought, and stimulate the reader to 
seek the greater intimacy of the writer. Such volumes 
serve the part of introductions in society : and so this 
little book would ask to be considered simply as an 
introduction to a man whose more intimate friendship is 
a privilege which may well be sought. 

ViDA D. SCUDDER. 
Wellesley College, October, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

INTRODUCTION 1 

RUSKIN THE REYEALER OF NATURE: — 

The Consecratiox 31 

Studies 35 

Vignettes 57 

Interpretations 62 

RUSKIN THE CRITIC OF ART : — 

The Grounds of Art 87 

The Imagination 92 

The Development of Landscape Art . . . 115 

Sacred Colour 122 

The Conditions of Art 131 

RUSKIN THE STUDENT OF SOCIOLOGY: — 

Principles and Facts 141 

Fallacies 161 

Prospect and Present Duty 178 

The Merchant Chivalry 182 

St. George's Guild 189 

RUSKIN THE TEACHER OF ETHICS: — 

The Day of Life 198 

Knowledge and Spirit 206 

Liberty and. Obedience 208 

Aphorisms 219 

Letter to Young Girls 224 

Trance 231 

World's Work 233 

World's Worth 244 

NOTES 247 



INTRODUCTION. 



I. 

JOHN RUSKIN IN HIS CENTURY. 

No man is a wider exponent of the life and thought 
of the nineteenth century than John Ruskin. Other 
men are greater, stronger in thought, more balanced in 
character, mightier in creative power; but no one has 
turned upon the complex modern world a nature more 
keen in appreciative insight, more many-sided, sensitive, 
and pure. Two writers, Browning and Carlyle, will be 
recognized by the twentieth century as prophets of the 
age that is passing away. Their message has rung like 
a trumpet-call through the years. Two others, Tenny- 
son and Ruskin, will be recognized as interpreters. All 
shifting phases of thought, passion, problem, and faith 
have been reflected and preserved by spiritual alchemy 
in the polished mirrors of their souls. 

In 1819, the same year which saw the birth of Ruskin, 
a girl-baby in Warwickshire began to absorb that per- 
ception of rural English beaiity which was to be shared 
with all the world through the pages of " Adam Bede " 
and " The Mill on the Floss." George Eliot and Ruskin 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

are exact contemporaries. The England into which they 
were born was the old-fashioned England of stage- 
coaches and gentle leisure. Railroads and telegraphs 
were unknown, and the change from the old order to an 
industrial and mechanical civilization was not yet com- 
pleted. Politically it was a time of outward pause ; the 
excitement of the French Revolution had passed away, 
yet the great outburst of song which had heralded and 
accompanied the Revolution still echoed in men's ears. 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelle}^, Byron, Keats, were 
still living, but a few short years were all the younger 
men were to see on earth, while in Wordsworth and 
Coleridge the poet, though not the man, had died. Scott 
was the hero of the hour. " Waverley " had been pub- 
lished in 1816, and the English public was carried away, 
through Ruskin's childhood, by the enthusiasm of the 
great romantic movement which Ruskin himself was to 
do so much to enlarge and to direct. Tennyson and 
Browning were little boys of ten and seven. Far north, 
in Scotland, a Scottish youth, rough, uncouth, unhappy, 
was garnering, in the tumult of dark spiritual experience 
and of external hardship, the bitter yet tender wisdom 
which was to fling itself in fruitful words on the pages 
of " Sartor Resartus." 

Of struggles, inward or outward, the little Ruskin 
knew but few. Only son of a rich wine-merchant, the 
sheltered simplicity of his life had little in common 
with such rough training as strengthened the sturdy 
fibres of the Scottish peasant. Yet in one teaching the 
cottage at Ecclefechan and the villa at Heme Hill were 



INTRODUCTION. 6 

agreed. Chapter by chapter, verse by verse, the little 
boy, like Carlyle before him, read the Bible over and 
over before his strict and devoted mother. Always 
reverent and docile in temperament, he seems to have 
followed with entire obedience, if sometimes with weari- 
ness, her minutely rigid method. Many long passages 
were learned by rote if not by heart, till his whole 
nature became steeped in the language and spirit of 
that mighty book which has for centuries nurtured the 
noblest English souls. "And truly," he says, "though 
I have picked up the elements of a little further knowl- 
edge in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in after 
life, and owe not a little to the teaching of other people, 
this maternal installation of my mind in that property 
of chapters I count very confidently the most precious, 
and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my 
education." 

Apart from the Bible, Buskin's chief early reading 
was in Homer, Scott, and Byron, all of whom he still 
loves with fidelity unshaken. Yet that gradual awaken- 
ing of the spirit within, which we call education, came 
to him less through the mind than through the eye. 
From the time he was four years old the family lived 
out of town, and in a large, old-fashioned, sweet garden 
the child spent most of his time, contented and solitary, 
learning to observe and to receive. In the summers the 
family took the most delightful of vacations, driving in 
leisurely fashion through England, Scotland, and later 
Switzerland. These journeys opened to the lad a fairy- 
land of wonders. From babyhood he had been raptur- 



4 INTROLXJCTION. 

ously alive to beauty, like Wordsworth's child in the 
famous ode. When he was only three years old, and 
was asked by a portrait painter what background he 
would like in the picture of his little self, he had decid- 
edly and swiftly answered, "blue hills." Such a nature, 
passionately contemplative, was enriched to the utmost 
by the absorption in early youth of much of the noblest 
and loveliest, both in art and nature, that Europe could 
furnish. When he was twelve years old a friend gave 
him Kogers's Italy with illustrations by Turner. Im- 
mediately there sprang up within him that profound 
and ardent discipleship which was to form the constrain- 
ing loyalty of twenty years of his life. Thus his quiet 
childhood slipped into youth, the love of art — architect- 
ure and painting — and the passion for poetry being sup- 
plemented in a way perhaps somewhat unusual by a strong 
bent towards scientific study. Euskin himself sums up 
his early life for us : " For best and truest beginning of 
all blessings, I had been taught the perfect meaning of 
peace, in thought, act, and word. . . . Next to this quite 
priceless gift of peace, I had received the perfect under- 
standing of the natures of obedience and faith : . . . 
these three for chief good ; next to these, the habit of 
fixed attention with both eyes and mind — on which I 
will not further enlarge at this moment, this being the 
main practical faculty of my life." 

In 1836 he went to Oxford, and was entered at Christ 
Church, the richest and most aristocratic of the colleges, 
as a gentleman commoner. The stern old city with its 
austere grace laid its spell upon him, and he entered 



INTRODUCTION, 6 

with some earnestness into the life, social and literary, 
of the best English youth. But his great enthusiasm 
was still for art, and for Turner's pictures. In time 
this enthusiasm assumed the form of indignant champion- 
ship. Turner was unquestionably the greatest landscape 
painter that the world had seen, but his works were 
hard to understand from their very novelty of method ; 
and, though not without recognition, he was at this time 
attacked and ridiculed in some of the leading reviews. 
Ruskin, with impetuous chivalry, hastened to defend 
him in a letter to a magazine. As he wrote, ideas 
pressed upon him : the letter grew to a pamphlet. Still 
he found himself " compelled " to " amplify," and when 
at last he paused, it was to find completed an entire 
book, inquiring into the true principles of painting, and 
defending modern art. This was the first volume of 
" Modern Painters," given to the world in 1843. 

Euskin was at this time twenty-four years old. His 
nature was ardently attuned to all high things. He had 
entered into the richest heritage that life could offer, 
with one great exception — he had never known struggle, 
and he had never known serious pain. Full of high 
possibilities he thus had still the immaturity of the 
eager boy. But henceforth his growth was to be before 
the public, and this fact may account for much seeming 
weakness and inconsistency. Carlyle was thirty-nine 
before he reached any general recognition. George 
Eliot at thirty-six had given nothing to the world. But 
Ruskin shared with the British public the freshness 
and the crudity of his first impressions, and from this 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

time his growth and change may be traced unfailingly 
through the long sequence of his famous books. 

"Modern Painters," this first volume, was received 
with derision by the art critics, with amazed applause 
by the public. Thus, almost by chance, the direction 
of Euskin's energies was determined. He professes him- 
self to regret that he has not been a geologist. With 
the large views of youth he had planned the work on a 
scale which required many volumes for its completion. 
The second volume followed in 1846. Then Turner 
passed to where beyond these voices there is peace. 
Neither abuse nor honour could touch him longer, and 
with a more sober devotion his young champion studied 
slowly for many years before he gave to the world the 
fruits of his riper thought. It was not till 1860 that 
Volume V. closed the long series, which, beginning with 
a defence of an individual artist, had extended to a 
broad historical and comparative study of art, ancient 
and modern, and had contained at least the suggestions 
_ of the theory of aesthetics which has proved most genu- 
inely and practically attractive through the century. 
The first part of the work is marked by the enthusiasm 
of youth, by an intense, unquestioning, narrow evangeli- 
calism ; by a devout adoration of beauty. The latter 
volumes, increasingly sad in tone, show swift growth in 
breadth, moderation, and in philosophical and analytic 
power. 

During these twenty years Euskin was loved and 
honoured throughout England as the chief interpreter of 
beauty in nature and in art. His works w^ere reverently 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

studied as a great educational power. The attitude 
towards art of the specialist was changed by his teach- 
ing, and the apathetic public was aroused to a new 
and intelligent aesthetic life. Ruskin's energies as an 
art critic were not confined to " Modern Painters." Two 
other great works, the " Stones of Venice " and the 
" Seven Lamps of Architecture,'' gave a vividly sympa- 
thetic exposition of Gothic architecture in its principles 
and history ; while many minor works, devoted to the 
one end of the interpretation of art in its purity and its 
truthfulness, bore witness to an unceasing devotion of 
work. But a change was coming. Even while he was 
absorbed in the contemplation of Italian masters or the 
glories of the Alps, another force, mighty and insistent, 
was drawing the soul of Ruskin away from the service 
of nature and art. It was the voice of the modern 
world. It summoned him from the study of beauty to 
the need of humanity. He obeyed the call. The inter- 
preter of art became the social reformer. Since 1860 
the chief interest of Mr. Euskin's life has been the 
effort to understand and solve the problems of human 
sorrow and human need. 

No stranger transition is recorded in history than this 
which has turned the philosophical student of art into 
the vehement teacher of political economy. Mr. Euskin 
was brought up, as we have seen, in the most conserva- 
tive of homes and the most conservative of universities. 
His temperament was receptive rather than aggressive, 
attuned to the love of beauty and the pursuit of ab- 
stractions, rather than to the apprehension of practical 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

facts. No personal grievance drove liim into rebellion : 
he was wealthy, and every refinement of fair living was 
within his reach. It is easy to see why a man like 
Carlyle should have become a social prophet : race sym- 
pathy and severe personal experience reacted from 
without on an inner nature militant and practical to 
the core. But that a Kuskin, with his ignorance of 
struggle, and his happy, instinctive contentment in 
leaves and pictures and cathedrals, shonld deliberately 
have entered the rough, hot, wearisome sphere of eco- 
nomic struggle is a phenomenon perplexing indeed. 

Reasons for the change are clear to the thoughtful 
mind. Ruskin and Carlyle start from opposite poles ; 
but both arrive at the same centre. And this because 
of that essential unity of life which forces artist and 
philosopher, fighter and dreamer, to remain alike rest- 
less, and seeking, each dissatisfied with his own sphere 
of energy, so long as disease in any part of the vast 
human organism affects and vitiates the whole. 

The year 1860 was the great watershed in Euskin's life. 
Already, in the fifth volume of " Modern Painters," the 
change which had passed over him was obvious to the 
attentive mind. But two courses of lectures, published 
as books in this year, or somewhat earlier, "The Two 
Paths," and " The Political Economy of Art," mark clearly 
and decisively the nature and cause of the transition. 

Carlyle preached social reform as the direct and 
necessary condition of pure living. Ruskin was driven 
to it in seeking for the necessary condition of pure art. 

There are two central themes in these books : — 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

First, The growth of a purely mechanical civilization 
tends to shut out the possibility of original, creative 
achievement in art, diverting men from the free study 
of organic form, vulgarizing their tastes, and deadening 
their powers. 

Second, Art can flourish only in a national life in- 
stinct with honour, beauty, justice, and peace. The wide 
spread of social misery renders such a national life im- 
possible : therefore, in our modern world, true art, or, a.t 
least, great and permanent art, cannot exist. Would we 
have pure art once more, we must purify our social order. 

Once these conclusions grasped, Kuskin turned obedi- 
ently and firmly from the study of art to the study of 
sociology. It might be expected that he would not 
approach this burning subject after the conventional 
fashion. His next book, " Unto This Last," a treatise 
on the elements of political economy, was received by a 
chorus of angry scorn and amused pity. The editors of 
the "Cornhill Magazine," in which it first came out, 
were obliged to decline further instalments when the 
first four chapters had appeared ; but Mr. Euskin 
pursued his way undaunted. As he continued to think, 
and to formulate his thoughts in print, the whole atti- 
tude of the English public towards him changed. He 
had been loved with a peculiar tenderness of reverence : 
he became not so much hated as despised. Rumors 
against his sanity crept about, disciples and friends left 
him in isolation : those who still clung to him lamented 
his mistaken folly. Goaded to exasperation by this 
treatment, he never, indeed, faltered j but he began to 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

express himself in extreme and fantastic forms, which 
lent color to the accusations of his critics. A lambent 
humour, fantastic yet fiery, began to play through his 
utterances ; and serious-minded Englishmen often found 
it impossible to say whether he were in jest or earnest. 
To one who has heard Mr. Euskin lecture, the effect of his 
amazing and scathing invectives against modern civiliza- 
tion is modified by the memory of a twinkle in a keen, 
deep-gray eye, and an especially gentle lisp. Un- 
doubtedly, many of his views and his way of stating 
them became crabbed and queer. It was through no 
personal desire that he entered the arena of social 
struggle; reluctantly, rather, and with many a wistful 
backward glance towards the world of calm he had left. 
" That it should be left to me," so he writes, " to begin 
such a work, with only one man in England — Thomas 
Carlyle — to whom I can look for steady guidance, is alike 
wonderful and sorrowful to me ; but, as the thing is so, 
I can only do what seems to me necessary, none else 
coming forward to do it." Suggestions of Mr. Euskin's 
leading principles and theories in social science will be 
found later in the book. Here, we can only say that his 
ideal for the state is a form of socialism founded not on 
equality but on justice and obedience. He did not 
entirely abandon his art-work, but it became more and 
more subordinate. He excited the derision of the 
public by various practical experiments, on a small 
scale : he started a tea-shop, for the sale of pure tea, 
which ignominiously failed, "because," as he whimsi- 
cally says, "of my procrastination in painting my 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

sign ; " he attempted to clean tlie Augean stables, and, 
for a time, hired a crossing in the dirtiest part of 
London kept absolutely clean; he inveigled certain 
young Oxford exquisites to engage with him in the 
wholesome manual labor of road-making, — a labor, it 
may be added, which they are said to have performed 
extremely ill. Comparison with the great Kussian 
reformer, Tolstoi, suggests itself as we read of this 
phase of Mr. Ruskin's life ; yet Euskin is, on the whole, 
less extreme, less literal, than Tolstoi. His passion for 
the highest and fairest products of civilization has done 
much to keep him balanced and broad in his ideals. 
Finally, in 1871, he began his most ambitious and pro- 
longed effort to realize his theories in practical form : 
an effort which, seemingly diffused and Utopian, has yet 
succeeded in clinging to some reality, despite the frag- 
mentary method by which it has been carried out. He 
started a monthly letter, which he called b}^ the fanciful 
name of Fors Clavigera, to the workmen of Great Britain. 
Few workmen were, it is to be feared, sufficiently exem- 
plary or enlightened to spend their time and their money 
over Mr. Ruskin's obscure, if beautiful, mosaic of Scrip- 
ture exposition, literary allusions, poetry, argument, and 
hard fact. Those who were soon found that he meant 
more than mere talk. The sight of the misery of the 
laboring classes and the evils due, as he believed, to an 
unrighteous competition, roused him to indignant speech 
and act. " For my part," he wrote, " I will put up with 
this state of things passively not an hour longer. I am 
not an unselfish person nor an evangelical one : I have 



1 2 IN TR OjD UCTION. 

no particular pleasure in doing good, neither do I dislike 
doing it, so much as to expect to be rewarded for it in 
another world. But I simply cannot paint nor read nor 
look at minerals, nor do anything else that I like, and 
the very light of the morning sky, when there is any, — 
which is seldom nowadays, near London, — has become 
hateful to me because of the misery I know of, and see 
signs of where I know it not, which no imagination can 
interpret too bitterly. Therefore, as I have said, I will 
endure it no longer quietly ; but henceforward, with any 
few or many who will help, do my poor best to abate 
this misery." 

The direct, obvious result of Ruskin's action was the 
formation of that Guild of St. George which will be 
found described later. He has himself been consistent, 
in deed as in word. Of the large fortune he inherited 
from his father he has given away eleven-twelfths ; and 
his best energy and genius during the last twenty years 
have been devoted to furthering, directly or indirectly, 
the social cause which he has at heart. But his versa- 
tile and sympathetic nature has not confined itself to 
any one line of effort. In 1870, and again in 1884, he 
was lecturer on art in his own university ; and the 
establishment of a School of Art in Oxford has been one 
of his best-loved schemes. In his charming books for 
girls and boys power of a different order has been mani- 
fested. Meanwhile, his swift and broad sympathies have 
embraced still another field. Even in his youth he 
showed the patient observation, the reverence for fact, 
which mark the scientific temperament. He has of late 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

years reverted to purely scientific studies, and in '^ Ethics 
of the Dust," '' Deucalion," and " Proserpina," has written 
of mineralog}^, geology, and botany in a charming way, 
which, though often too independent to be recognized 
by conventional science, yet gives incentive and sug- 
gestion to all his readers. 

Truly, as was said at the beginning, the career of 
Euskin is typical. His life has covered many phases, 
rising, falling, in swift succession. Born while Scott 
and Byron were supreme, he has outlived the work of 
Browning and of George Eliot. Born while Adam Smith 
was the one authority in economics, he has lived to see 
the school of Mill called antiquated, and swept away by 
a new and vivid tendency. His maturity has witnessed 
the rise, in some cases the full expression, of the five 
great movements around which have been centred the ac- 
tivities of the modern world. The critical movement, 
the scientific movement, the religious movement, the artis- 
tic movement, the social movement, — each of these has 
passed over him ; to each his eager and delicate nature 
has stirred responsive. Of two of these . movements he 
has been at the very heart. The artistic movement 
was largely moulded, if not originated, by his powerful 
genius. Concerning his place and value in the social 
movement it is not yet time to speak. To his work in 
this direction he has sacrificed his popularity, his health, 
and, more bitter far, his influence. .Where he was revered, 
he is ridiculed ; where he was obeyed, he is neglected. 
Still the battle is hot and the issue doubtful. But our 
judgment of the value of Mr. Ruskin's economic ideas 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

should not affect our profound sense of the significance 
of his conversion. We may condemn his theories as 
Utopian extravaganzas : all the more imperious must 
have been the stress of the impulse which drove him 
from the sphere in which he was master, to that in 
which he is unfit even to labour. It is strange in- 
deed to find the same man prominent as an interpreter 
of the beautiful and a student of the dismal science of 
political economy : it is sad more than strange if the inter- 
preter of beauty forfeits his own fair power to gain 
mere self-delusion in exchange. Kuskin's is not, as we 
have said, the assertive or progressive temperament. 
He is, by choice, no leader of his time. He has never 
doubted, except where doubt was forced upon him. 
Reverence and obedience are the instinctive watchwords 
of his nature. That such a man, intensely conserva- 
tive in every nerve, should be relentlessly driven to a 
position considered by most of his contemporaries as 
dangerously radical, is a paradox touched with grim 
humour but with deeper pathos. That he should be 
forced by modern conditions to turn from joyous and 
adoring contemplation, and, Hamlet-like, to assume the 
burden of the times, is a fact on which we may well 
pause. The significance is clear : the noble sensitive- 
ness of the man has simply felt, a little before his 
fellows, the new "common wave of thought" which 
was to " lift mankind." The change in Euskin is the 
change of the century. From " Modern Painters " to 
" Fors Clavigera," — this is the great transition of the age. 
We began the Victorian era with art : with high theoretic 



INTE OD UCTION. 15 

enthusiasm, with romantic devotion to the past, with 
reverence for beauty, yet often with complacent content 
in our elaborate society. We end with social science : 
with a strenuous, practical earnestness, with consecra- 
tion to human needs, with deepening humility. Beauty 
is not forgotten nor despised. It is ours, a precious pos- 
session forever. But it has led us to something beyond 
itself, — to the conception of that perfect state where 
alone it can be perfectly realized. It is because John 
Ruskin, more than any other one man in England, has 
felt these two influences of Art and Humanity, that we 
are eager to study him : it is because he has reflected 
them both in a nature clear, reverent, and true, and 
through words beautiful since sincere, that we trust our 
study of even a few selections from his writings to leave 
us richer than it found us, in thous^ht and life. 



16 INTRODUCTION. 



II. 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE MORE IMPORTANT WRIT- 
INGS OF JOHN RUSKIN. 

The Poetry of Architecture. Papers contributed to the 
Architectural Magazine, 1837-1839. Signed Kata Phusin. 

Modern Painters. Vol. I. By a Graduate of Oxford. 
1843. 

Modern Painters. Vol. 11. 1846. 

The Seven Lamps of Architecture. By John Ruskin. 
1849. (Henceforth Ruskin published under his own name.) 

Poems. Collected 1859. 

The Stones of Venice. 1851-1853. 

Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. (Concern- 
ing theories of the Church.) 1851. 

Lectures on Architecture. 1853. 

Modern Painters. Vol. III. 1856. 

Modern Painters. Vol. IV. 1856. 

1 The Political Economy of Art. 1857. 

The Elements of Drawing. 1857. 

The Two Paths. Lectures on Art and its Application to 
Decoration and Manufacture. 1860. 

Modern Painters. Vol. V. 1860. 

Unto This Last. 1860. 

Munera Pulveris. 1863. 

1 Lectures afterwards published under the title " A Joy For Ever." 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

Sesame and Lilies. 1865. 

Ethics of the Dust. 1865. 

The Crown of Wild Olive. 1866. 

Time and Tide. Twenty-five Letters to a Working-Man of 
Sunderland on the Laws of Work. 1867. 

The Queen of the Air. A Study of the Greek Myths of 
Cloud and Storm. 1869. 

Lectures on Art, delivered before the University of 
Oxford. 1870. 

FORS Clavigera. Monthly Letters to the Workmen and 
Labourers of Great Britain. 1871-1878. 

Aratra Pentelici. On the Elements of Sculpture. 

The Eagle's Nest. The Relation of Natural Science to 
Art. 1872. 

Ariadne Florentina. Lectures on Engraving. 1872. 

Proserpina. Studies of Wayside Flowers. 1876. 

Deucalion. Collected Studies of the Lapse of Waves and 
Life of Stones. 1878. 

Mornings in Florence. 1877. 

St. Mark's Rest. 1877. 

The Laws of Fesole. 1878. 

The Art of England. Oxford Lectures. 1884. 

The Pleasures of England. Oxford Lectures. 1885. 

Our Fathers have told Us. Sketches of the History of 
Christendom for Boys and Girls who have been held at its 
Fonts. Part I. The Bible of Amiens. 1885. 

Preterita. Scenes of my Past Life. 1887. 



18 INTRODUCTION. 



III. 

THE ACHIEVEMENT OF RUSKIN. 

EusKiN has not only been one of the most representa- 
tive men of the century, he has also been one of its 
most potent influences. The influence, like that of all 
finest things, has been in great measure impalpable and 
elusive. The best results of his life are written in the 
souls he has awakened to the love of beauty and the 
vision of the right. Yet there are certain definite, prac- 
tical changes in the attitude of the average man, which 
may be traced with reasonable assurance to his teaching. 

At the time when Ruskin began to write, England 
was suffering from an invasion of ugliness. From house- 
hold furnishings to ecclesiastical architecture the artistic 
ideal of the time was perhaps meaner than at any date 
before or since. One or two of the many reasons for 
this degradation lie on the surface. First, came the 
supplanting of hand-work by machinery. All through 
the Middle Ages, and even through the eighteenth cent- 
ury and the time of Queen Anne, men used themselves 
to build and decorate their houses and to weave their 
garments. But when steam power was discovered, two- 
thirds of the work which had been done by hand was 
given over to machines. For a time men fancied that 
nothing was worth doing which could not be accom- 



INTBODUCTION. 19 

plished by these wondrous automatic slaves. They 
were never tired of seeing how many yards of brilliant 
carpets, how many articles of showy furniture, could be 
turned out in less time than the faithful, old-fashioned 
hand-work would have given to one article. But really 
artistic or beautiful objects can only result from the 
personal impress of the worker on his work ; and as a 
result of this wholesale method of production, a mechani- 
cal, gaudy, vulgarized style pervaded almost every form 
of industry and reacted upon the fine arts. This was one 
reason for the dreary dearth of true beauty; another 
may perhaps be found in the prevailing religious attitude 
of the day. Most of the people sensitive to spiritual 
things were then evangelicals. Now the evangelicals 
were in theory ascetics. Their peculiar form of faith 
derived obviously from the Methodists, who had been, as 
a rule, unlettered people, indifferent to fineness or art ; 
by more indirect and subtle means it continued in many 
respects the old Puritan traditions of England. An 
evangelical drew a sharp distinction between the things 
of this world and the next : all outside a certain sphere 
of religious dogma and emotion was to him " vile earth '' 
or " worldly dross.'^ Thus he feared and despised physi- 
cal beauty as a vanity, if not a dangerous temptation. 
The Oxford Movement (1833-1846) did something to 
fight against this feeling and to bring back beauty and 
learning to the service of the Church. But the Oxford 
Movement itself was tinctured with asceticism. It was 
ecclesiastical, not universal. It appreciated gladly the 
solemn glory of the cathedral where pillared nave and 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

burning windows shielded a ritual symbolically fair, but 
it was blind to the beauty of the forest and the sky. 

Kuskin himself was born and bred in the evangelical 
religion and in the crudities of a mechanical luxury ; 
but he was destined to counteract many of the tenden- 
cies of both. The first work which he did, or helped to 
do, was to recall people to the perception of true beauty, 
and to the faith that all beauty is the consecrated reve- 
lation of God, not to be distrusted as a dangerous snare, 
but to be received with reverent delight. Our great 
century has seen no greater change than this. E-uskin's 
method of interpretation was from the first singularly 
fearless and high. In the second volume of " Modern 
Painters " he sought the sources and analogues of the 
different elements of beauty in the Divine Nature itself, 
in energy, justice, infinity, moderation, permanence. " I 
have long believed," he writes in the " Stones of Venice," 
"that in whatever has been made by the Deity exter- 
nally delightful to the human sense of beauty, there is 
some type of God's nature or of God's laws." This 
principle pervades not only " Modern Painters," but 
nearly all Mr. Ruskin's important works. Whether it 
be correct or no, he accomplished two ends : he vindi- 
cated the sanctity of art and beauty, and he gave to 
them a new zest of interest in the mind of the public. 
Always his treatment was human. Theories of art were 
then dry, formal, technical, and the world did not trouble 
its mind over them. Ruskin discussed art in a way that 
people could understand. He defended modern artists ; 
he pleaded for the re-introduction of passion, simplicity. 



INTROBUCTlon. M 

truth. He gave the whole subject new life. And he 
succeeded in making the general public both ardent and 
intelligent, in awakening them, first to honour beauty, 
and then to pursue it. The new impulse is extending 
into the minutest details of practical art. If our houses 
are prettier than the houses of our fathers — they are 
not yet, alas, so pretty as those of our great-grandfathers, 
— the change is largely due to Mr. Euskin. The whole 
movement loosely known as aestheticism goes back to 
his works for the inspiration of its origin, though it 
departs widely from him in its development, ^stheti- 
cism is absurd enough when caricatured by enemies or 
friends ; yet it has meant on the whole a healthy return 
to sound principles of workmanship, and simple and 
graceful conditions of life. 

One of the most effective ways in which Kuskin 
brought people back to a wholesome love of beauty was 
through quickening in them the love of nature, — of the 
fair sky above them and the fertile earth beneath. Not 
that such love was first preached by Euskin. To find 
the pioneers of the great movement which has led men 
by the roads of science and of poetry back to the heart 
of nature and bade them rest there, we must return to 
the eighteenth century. During Euskin's youth the 
priests of nature, Wordsworth and Shelley first and 
chief, were unveiling her mysteries. But they wrote in 
poetry, and poets and their ideas have to be translated 
into prose before we can be sure of their general or per- 
manent effect. Euskin was the first prose author of 
importance in whose works the loving interpretation of 



22 INTR OB UCTION. 

nature formed a leading phase. Thus he marks in a 
sense the transition when this love became no longer an 
eccentric thing, branding the man who held it as a 
mystic or a fool, but a general heritage into which were 
to enter all gentle and right-minded people. Euskin's 
studies of nature are among the most valuable, and will 
very likely form the most permanent portions of his 
books. 

Several definite facts in the history of modern activity 
can be traced to Ruskin. One of the chief art move- 
ments of modern times is directly connected with his 
teaching. In 1848 a few young men, disgusted with 
false sublimity and cold reverence for the antique, united 
in a little band that called itself the Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood. Three of them have since become famous : 
their names are John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel 
Eossetti, and Holman Hunt. They began to exhibit 
pictures which hurled defiance at all the accepted canons 
of art; pictures strange in color and drawing, bearing 
witness to feeling passionate and often devout, and to 
study of nature minutely truthful, pictures that returned 
in simplicity of method and spirit to the work of the 
early Italian painters before Raphael and the Renas- 
cence. Mr. Ruskin constituted himself the champion of 
these young men ; they were the exponents of the prin- 
ciples in art for which he lived ; much and eloquently 
he wrote in their defence. As years have passed, the 
movement has in some respects departed from its orig- 
inal character ; yet it has been continued by at least two 
men, Burne-Jones and Watts, equal in power to its 



INTR OB UCTION. 23 

founders, and the magnitude and unique quality of their 
work bear witness to the strength and vitality of the 
original impulse. 

In one other important direction the influence of 
Kuskin on the art of the century cannot be ignored : in 
the revival of an enthusiasm for Gothic architecture. 
The pseudo-classic architecture which was revived in 
the Eenascence had flourished, degenerated, and yet 
prevailed. The Gothic was despised as the building of 
barbarian rudeness, unfit for civilized respect. The re- 
kindling of intelligent love for Gothic may be traced 
to many causes ; Kuskin's teaching is only one strand 
in the web woven also of the romantic passion for the 
Middle Ages illustrated by Scott, and the quickening of 
the Catholic spirit illustrated by Keble. But no one 
cause, perhaps, has done so much to give the interest in 
architecture a practical as well as a sentimental bent, as 
Kuskin's devotion. 

When we pass from Kuskin's influence in art to his 
work in social science, we find ourselves on less certain 
ground. It is impossible here to attempt an estimate 
of the value of his achievement. The laughter of the 
British public counts for little. It may be conceded at 
once that Mr. Kuskin chooses strange titles for his 
books, titles poetic rather than utilitarian, tinged with a 
delicate, often a recondite, fancy. It is certainly hard 
to trust the practical good sense of a m^an who calls a 
treatise on Political Economy " Unto This Last," or 
" Munera Pulveris." He interweaves discussions of 
the law of wages with interpretations of queer Greek 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

myths, or with fragments of philology. Moreover, he 
has an inconvenient habit of constantly dragging in as 
witness and authority, even in the most modern and 
practical of discussions, the simple words of the Bible. 
It is no wonder that the average man eyes him askance, 
and talks about "Political Economy in the moon." 
Nevertheless, till it be proved that there can be no 
rational connection between fact and poetry, and that 
Greek thought or Hebrew thought has positively no 
business to influence English thought, logical grounds 
for despising Mr. Ruskin have not, we must confess, 
been discovered. True, many of his schemes bear in 
detail the mark of the poet and the idealist rather than 
of the practical man ; as when he dreams of a national 
costume or of the fair procession in which youths and 
maidens should annually exult when judged by the State 
worthy of marriage. True, he has a horror of steam- 
machinery which will not commend itself to the business 
man, although his serious condemnation of steam has 
perhaps been exaggerated. Yet, when all elements of 
dreamy vision and of extreme and extravagant detail 
are withdrawn, there are still to be found in Mr. Ruskin's 
writings a fundamental conception of the State and its 
laws, and a systematized suggestion of needed reforms, 
which are not worthy of contempt. For adequate judg- 
ment of his theories the time has not yet come. His 
positive work seems, so far, to be represented by St. 
George's Guild, established in 1871. This is a company of 
men and women who, like-minded with himself, are bound 
together under him as their master with the purpose of 



INTR OD UCTION. 25 

buying English land whereon to establish communities 
free from the rush of competition and the evils of 
machinery, and maiiily devoted to the wholesome cultiva- 
tion of the soil. The guild is small in numbers ; its 
practical work seems greatly limited, though it has 
established a museum at Sheffield, and otherwise shown 
itself loyal and ready for service. Probably its influ- 
ence extends far beyond those who range themselves as 
its members. 

We have not spoken as yet of the way in which Mr. 
Euskin's genius has impressed itself most strongly on 
his generation through his power of writing beautiful 
English. As an author he has done a great work, in 
many respects a high work, for English prose. It is by 
this power that he won his fame, and that, as many 
critics think, he will retain his place in English litera- 
ture when his theories are forgotten or no longer needed. 
When the first volume of " Modern Painters " appeared, 
it seemed written in a language such as people had 
never heard before, — a language half way between poetry 
and prose, supple like prose, yet with the imaginative 
fervor of poetry. It was full of passages of description 
where the melodious sound seemed almost to present 
physical images to the senses ; it glowed with color, 
throbbed with music. Yet this style, exciting and deco- 
rated as it was, was built on a foundation of pure Eng- 
lish — English learned from the English Bible and from 
old divines. It was not Germanized, like Carlyle, nor 
Latinized, like Macaulay, but was soundly Saxon in 
structure, however embroidered with strange ornament. 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

As Ruskin grew older he came to use word-pictures, as 
they are called, less and less. The power to write them 
is dangerous, and in the hands of his imitators has be- 
come a weariful affectation. Even Ruskin himself is 
sometimes florid and over-charged. But his later books, 
in which this power though latent is controlled, and the 
power of clear, straightforward utterance is developed, 
are among the noblest models of English we possess. 
They are terse, they are pure, they are strong. Some- 
times still an intense feeling is expressed in exaggerated 
though half humourous invective, or the author admits us 
to a whimsical intimacy that proves bewildering ; but 
the passion, when it does not forget itself, irradiates the 
pages with a glow all the more impressive because sub- 
dued. There is no author of our time so legitimately 
magnificent in his use of English as Ruskin when he is 
at his best. 

Ruskin has certainly one mark of greatness : for he 
defies classification. He can be claimed by no one 
school of artistic thought, social thought, or religious 
thought. Yet the heart of his teaching, in all his ver- 
satile books, is ever the same. He teaches that all 
beauty, all art, all work, and all life, are holy things : 
that through them God manifests Himself to man, and 
man draws near to God. It is in this reference of all 
matters in art and conduct to the spiritual standard, and 
the judgment of them all alike by a spiritual motive, 
that we shall find a steady consistency underlying his 
seemingly shifting utterances. In the unfaltering, 
though often sad, devoutness of his spirit^ consists the 



INTR OB UCTION. 27 

final claim of John Euskin upon our earnest, faithful, 
and reverent study. He has summed up for us his own 
conception of the meaning of his life-work in a passage 
in the seventh volume of " Fors Clavigera : " — 

" In rough approximation of date nearest to the com- 
pletion of the several pieces of my life-work, as they are 
built one on the other, — at twenty, I wrote ^ Modern 
Painters ' ; at thirty, ^ The Stones of Venice ' ; at forty, 
' Unto This Last ' ; at fifty, the inaugural Oxford lect- 
ures ; and, if ^ Fors Clavigera ' is ever finished as I 
mean, it will mark the mind I had at sixty, and leave 
me, in the seventh day of my life, perhaps — to rest. 
For the code of all I had to teach will then be in form, 
as it is now at this hour in substance, completed. 

"'Modern Painters' taught the claim of all lower 
nature on the hearts of men : of the rock, and wave, and 
herb, as a part of their necessary spirit life ; in all that I 
now bid you to do, to dress the earth and keep it, I am 
fulfilling what I then began. ' The Stones of Venice ' 
taught the laws of constructive art, and the dependence 
of all human work or edifice for its beauty on the happy 
life of the workman. ' Unto This Last ' taught the laws 
of that life itself, and its dependence on the Sun of Just- 
ice. The inaugural Oxford lectures, the necessity that it 
should be led, and the gracious laws of beauty and labour 
recognized by the upper no less than the lower classes 
of England. And lastly, 'Fors Clavigera' has declared 
the relation of these to each other, and the only pos- 
sible conditions of peace and honour, for low and high, 
rich and poor, together, in the holding of that first 



28 INTR OD UCTION. 

estate, under the only Despot, God, from which whoso 
falls, angel or man, is kept, not mythically nor disput- 
ably, but here in visible horror of chains under darkness 
to the judgment of the great day : and in keeping which 
service is perfect freedom, and inheritance of all that a 
loving Creator can give to his creatures, and an immortal 
Father to his children. 

"This, then, is the message which, knowing no more 
as I unfolded the scroll of it what next would be written 
there than a blade of grass knows what the form of its 
fruit shall be, I have been led on year by year to speak, 
even to this its end." 



RUSKIN THE REVEALER OF NATURE. 



" So it is with external Nature : she has a body and a soul like man ; 
but her soul is the Deity. It is possible to represent the body without 
the spirit; and this shall be like to those whose senses are only cog- 
nizant of body. It is possible to represent the spirit in its ordinary 
and inferior manifestations; and this shall be like to those who have 
not watched for its moments of power. It is possible to represent the 
spirit in its secret and high operations ; and this shall be like only to 
those to whose watching they have been revealed. All these are 
truth; but according to the dignity of the truths he can represent or 
feel is the power of the painter, — the justice of the judge." 

— Modern Painters. 

PRELUDE.^ 

"Let us inteiTogate the great apparition which shines so 
peacefully around us. Let us enquire to what end is nature." 

Thus writes Emerson, and proceeds to answer his own 
question. He tells us that the uses of nature are fourfold: 
Commodity, Beauty, Language, and Discipline. Commodity, 
— the value of nature to the physical man : here is the quality 
which appeals to nations in their childhood, men in their 
crudity, and forms the subject of the lower phases of physical 
science. Beauty, — the aspect which arrests the observant eye 
of the artist, and rejoices the eager soul of the poet. Lan- 
guage, — the revelation through type and symbol of an eternal 
Spirit, beheld shining through the veil of outward form by the 
mystic of all ages from Plato to Carlyle. Discipline, — the 
function of nature as the great teacher, who, through the 
sternness of multiform law, the tenderness of multiform sug- 



30 RUSKIN THE REVEALER OF NATURE. 

gestion, moulds her child, seon after seou, into the likeness of 
the Perfect Man. 

Seldom, indeed, is a man found responsive to the message 
of nature in all its different phases : dowered at once with the 
temperament of the scientist, the artist, the mystic, and the 
sage. But such a man is Ruskin. He has the instinct of the 
scientist; and he studies the facts of the world around him 
with patience reverent and minute. He has the eye of the 
artist, lovingly sensitive to every modulation of colour and of 
form ; and no small measure has been vouchsafed to him of 
that creative power which, whether by words or tints, can 
reproduce for others perceived beauties. He has the soul of 
the mystic, swiftly alive to each spiritual suggestion latent in 
herb and cloud and mountain. And, finally, nature is more to 
him than use, than beauty, than language. She is also the 
guide to the moral being, and her ultimate value is in her 
training of the conscience and the will. 

Thus it is with a singularly complete equipment that Ruskin 
comes to us as an interpreter of nature. All these different 
aspects and different methods of presentation blend in his writ- 
ing like the colours in a gem, and flash out on us as we watch 
its varying lights. To trace them, one after another, to dis- 
entangle them, to study their nature and their union, is a fasci- 
nating possibility which the thoughtful reader will not fail to 
realize. 



THE CONSECRATION. 



Difficult enough for you to imagine, that old travellers 
time, when Switzerland was yet the land of the Swiss, and 
the Alps had never been trod by foot of man. Steam, 
never heard of yet, but for short, fair-weather crossing at sea 
(were there paddle-packets across Atlantic ? I forget). Any- 
way, the roads by land were safe ; and entered once into this 
mountain Paradise, we wound on through its balmy glens, past 
cottage after cottage on their lawns, still glistening in the 
dew. 

The road got into more barren heights by the mid-day, the 
hills arduous ; once or twice we had to wait for horses, and we 
were still twenty miles from Schaffhausen at sunset ; it was 
past midnight when we reached her closed gates. The dis- 
turbed porter had the grace to open them — not quite wide 
enough ; we carried away one of the lamps in collision with the 
slanting bar as we drove through the arch. How much happier 
the privilege of dreamily entering a mediaeval city, though 
with the loss of a lamp, than the free ingress of being jammed 
between a dray and a tram-car at a railroad station ! 

It is strange that I but dimly recollect the following morn- 
ing ; I fancy we must have gone to some sort of church or 
other ; and certainly, part of the day went in admiring the 
bow-windows projecting into the clean streets. None of us 
seemed to have thought the Alps would be visible without pro- 
fane exertion in climbing hills. We dined at four, as usual, 



32 THE CONSECRATION. 

and the evening being entirely fine, went to walk, all of us, — 
my father and mother and Mary and I. 

We must have still spent some time in town — seeing, for it 
was drawing toward sunset when we got up to some sort of 
garden promenade — west of the town, I believe ; and high 
above the Rhine, so as to command the open country across it 
to south and west. At which open country of low undulation, 
far into blue, — gazing as at one of our own distances from 
Malvern of Worcestershire, or Dorking of Kent, — suddenly 

— behold — bej^ond. 

There was no thought in any of us for a moment of their 
being clouds. They were as clear as crystal, sharp on the 
pure horizon sk5^ and already tinged with rose by the sinking 
sun. Infinitely beyond all that we had ever thought or dreamed , 

— the seen walls of lost Eden could not have been more beau- 
tiful to us ; not more awful, round heaven, the walls of sacred 
Death. 

It is not possible to imagine, in any time of the world, a 
more blessed entrance into life, for a child of such a tem- 
perament as mine. True, the temperament belonged to 
the age : a very few years, — within the hundred, — before 
that, no child could have been born to care for the mountains, 
or for the men that lived among them, in that way. Till 
Rousseau's time, there had been no "sentimental" love of 
nature; and till Scott's, no such apprehensive love of "all 
sorts and conditions of men," not in the soul merely, but in the 
flesh. St. Bernard of La Fontaine, looking out to Mont Blanc, 
with his child's eyes, sees above Mont Blanc the Madonna; St. 
Bernard of Talloires, not the Lake of Annecy but the dead 
between INIartigny and Aosta. But for me, the Alps and 
their people were alike beautiful in their snow, and their 
humanity ; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight 
of any throne in heaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in 
heaven but the clouds. 



THE CONSECRATION. 33 

Thus, in perfect health of life and fire of heart, not wanting 
to be anything but the boy I was, not wanting to have anything 
more than I had ; knowing of sorrow only just so much as to 
make life serious to me, not enough to slacken in the least its 
sinews ; and with so much of science mixed with feeling as to 
make the sight of the Alps not only the revelation of the beauty 
of the earth, but the opening of the first page of its volume, — 
I went down that evening from the garden-terrace of Schaff- 
hausen with my destiny fixed in all of it that was to be sacred 
and useful. To that terrace, and the shore of the Lake of 
Geneva, my heart and faith return to this day, in every im- 
4)ulse that is yet nobly alive in them, and every thought that 
has in it help or peace. — Prceterita, vol. i. chap. vi. 



JOHN RUSKIN. 



STUDIES. 

AIR AND CLOUDS. 



The deep of air that surrounds the earth enters into 
union with the earth at its surface, and with its waters ; 
so as to be the apparent cause of their ascending into life. 
First, it warms them, and shades, at once, staying the 
heat of ^he sun's rays in its own body, but warding their 
force with its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with 
traffic of balm and frost ; so that the white wreaths are 
withdrawn from the field of the Swiss peasant by the 
glow of Libyan rock. It gives its own strength to the 
sea ; forms and fills every cell of its foam ; sustains the 
precipices, and designs the valleys of its waves ; gives 
the gleam to their moving under the night, and the 
white fire to their plains under sunrise; lifts their 
voices along the rocks, bears above them the spray of 
birds, pencils through them the dimpling of unfooted 
sands. It gathers out of them a portion in the hollow 
of its hand ; dyes, with that, the hills into dark blue, 
and their glaciers with dying rose ; inlays with that, for 
sapphire, the dome in which it has to set the cloud ; 



36 JOHN BUSKIN. 

shapes out of that the heavenly flocks : divides them, 
numbers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, calls them 
to their journeys, waits by their rest ; feeds from them 
the brooks that cease not, and strews with them the 
dews that cease. It spins and weaves their fleece into 
wild tapestry, rends it, and renews ; and flits and flames, 
and whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling them 
with a plectrum of strange fire that traverses them to 
and fro, and is enclosed in them like life. 

It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, and 
falls together with it into fruitful dust, from which can 
be moulded flesh ; it joins itself, in dew, to the substance 
of adamant ; and becomes the green leaf out of the dry 
ground ; it enters into the separated shapes of the earth 
it has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the cur- 
rent of their life, fills their limbs with its own l%htness, 
measures their existence by its indwelling pulse, moulds 
upon their lips the words by which one soul can be 
known to another ; is to them the hearing of the ear, 
and the beating of the heart ; and, passing away, leaves 
them to the peace that hears and moves no more. — The 
Queen of the Air, sec. 98. 

We have next to ask what colour from sunshine can 
the white cloud receive, and what the black ? 

You won't expect me to tell you all that, or even the 
little that is accurately known about that, in a quarter 
of an hour ; yet not3 these main facts on the matter. 

On any pure white, and practically opaque, cloud, or 
thing like a cloudv as an Alp, or Milan Cathedral, you 



STUDIES. S7 

can have cast by rising or setting sunlight, any tints of 
amber, orange, or moderately deep rose — you can't 
have lemon yellows, or any kind of green except in neg- 
ative hue by opposition ; and though by storm-light you 
may sometimes get the reds cast very deep, beyond a 
certain limit you cannot go, — the Alps are never ver- 
milion colour, nor flamingo colour, nor canary colour ; 
nor did you ever see a full scarlet cumulus of thunder- 
cloud. 

On opaque white vapour, then, remember, you can get 
a glow or a blush of colour, never a flame of it. 

But when the cloud is transparent, as well as pure, 
and can be filled with light through all the body of it, 
you then can have by the light reflected from its atoms 
any force conceivable by human mind of the entire group 
of the golden and ruby colours, from intensely burnished 
gold colour, through a scarlet for whose brightness there 
are no words, into any depth and any hue of Tyrian 
crimson and Byzantine purple. These with full blue 
breathed between them at the zenith, and green blue 
nearer the horizon, form the scales and chords of colour 
possible to the morning and evening sky in pure and 
fine weather ; the keynote of the opposition being ver- 
milion against green blue, both of equal tone, and at 
such a height and acme of brilliancy that you cannot see 
the line where their edges pass into each other. — The 
Storm- Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, lect. i. 

It is to be remembered that although clouds of course 
arrange themselves more or less into broad masses, with 



38 JOHN BUSKIN. 

a light side and dark side, both their light and shade 
are invariably composed of a series of divided masses, 
each of which has in its outline as much variety and 
character as the great outline of the cloud. . . . Nor 
are these multitudinous divisions a truth of slight 
importance in the character of sky, for they are de- 
pendent on, and illustrative of, a quality which is 
usually in a great degree overlooked, — the enormous 
retiring spaces of solid clouds. Between the illumined 
edge of a heaped cloud, and that part of its body which 
turns into shadow, there will generally be a clear dis- 
tance of several miles, more or less of course, according 
to the general size of the cloud, but in such large masses 
as in Poussin and others of the old masters, occupy the 
fourth or fifth of the visible sky ; the clear illumined 
breadth of vapour, from the edge to the shadow, involves 
at least a distance of five or six miles. We are little apt, 
in watching the changes of a mountainous range of cloud, 
to reflect that the masses of vapour which compose it, are 
huger and higher than any mountain range of the earth ; 
and the distances between mass and mass are not yards 
of air traversed in an instant by the flying form, but 
valleys of changing atmosphere leagues over ; that the 
slow motions of ascending curves, which we can scarcely 
trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapour rushing into 
the heaven a thousand feet in a minute ; and that the 
toppling angle whose sharp edge almost escapes notice 
in the multitudinous forms around it, is a nodding prec- 
ipice of storms, 3000 feet from base to summit. It is 
not until we have actually compared the forms of the 



STUDIES. 39 

sky with the hill ranges of the earth, and seen the soar- 
ing Alp overtopped and buried in one surge of the sky, 
that we begin to conceive or appreciate the colossal 
scale of the phenomena of the latter. But of this there 
can be no doubt in the mind of any one accustomed to 
trace the forms of clouds among hill ranges — as it is 
there a demonstrable and evident fact, that the space of 
vapour visibly extended over an ordinarily cloudy sky, 
is not less, from the point nearest to the observer to the 
horizon, than twenty leagues ; that the size of every 
mass of separate form, if it be at all largely divided, is 
to be expressed in terms of miles ; and that every boil- 
ing heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky, is an 
enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in 
height, six or seven miles over in illuminated surface, 
furrowed by a thousand colossal ravines, torn by local 
tempests into peaks and promontories, and changing its 
features with the majestic velocity of the volcano. — 
Modern Painters, vol. i. part ii. sec. iii. chap. iii. 

WATER. 

Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper 
nature, and without assistance or combination, water is 
the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of 
all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in 
clouds ; then as the instrument by which the earth we 
have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its 
crags chiselled into grace ; then as, in the form of snow, 
it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcend- 
ent light which we could not have conceived if we had 



40 JOHN BUSKIN. 

not seen ; then as it exists in the form of the torrent — in 
the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises 
from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its 
hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river ; 
finally, in that which is to all human minds the best 
emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, 
various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea ; what shall 
we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for 
glory and for beauty ? or how shall we follow its eternal 
changefulness of feeling ? It is like trying to paint a 
soul. . . . 

To paint the actual play of hue on the reflective 
surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it 
begins to show itself — to give the flashing and rocket- 
like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and 
grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modelled, though 
so mockingly transient — so mountainous in its form, 
yet so cloud-like in its motion — with its variety and 
delicacy of colour, when every ripple and wreath has 
some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, 
and the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed 
with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock 
below ; — to do this perfectly is beyond the power of 
man ; to do it even partially, has been granted to but 
one or two, even of those few who have dared to attempt 
it. . . . 

The fact is, that there is hardly a roadside pond or 
pool which has not as much landscape in it as above it. 
It is not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to 
be ; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the bottom of 



STUDIES. 41 

that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades 
of the shaking grass, and all manner of hues, of variable, 
pleasant light out of the sky ; nay, the ugly gutter, that 
stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul 
city, is not altogether base ; down in that, if you will 
look deep enough, jon may see the dark, serious blue of 
far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your 
own will that you see in that despised stream, either the 
refuse of the street, or the image of the sky — so it is 
with almost all other things that we unkindly despise. 
— Vol. i. part ii. sec. v. chap. i. 

For all other rivers there is a surface, and an under- 
neath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. 
But the Khone flows like one lambent jewel ; its surface 
is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent 
rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, — 
and radiant to the depth. Fifteen feet thick, of not 
flowing, but flying water ; not water, neither, — melted 
glacier, rather, one should call it ; the force of the ice is 
with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, the gladness of 
the sky, and the continuance of Time. 

Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but 
they are always coming or gone, never in any taken 
shape to be seen for a second. But here was one 
mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted 
swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No 
wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering 
of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil ; but 
alike through bright day and lulling night, the never- 



42 JOHN BUSKIN. 

pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hush- 
ing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answer- 
ing glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet 
blue, gentian blue, peacock blue, river-of paradise blue, 
glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the 
witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever 
from her snow. 

The innocent way, too, in which the river used to 
stop to look into every little corner. Great torrents 
always seem angry, and great rivers too often sullen ; 
but there is no anger, no disdain, in the Khone. It 
seemed as if the mountain stream was in mere bliss at 
recovering itself out of the lake-sleep, and raced because 
it rejoiced in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There 
were pieces of wave that danced all day as if Perdita 
were looking on to learn ; there wei^e little streams that 
skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois ; there were 
pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and 
were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, like crystal 
sand; there were currents that twisted the light into 
golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise 
enamel ; there were strips of stream that had certainly 
above the lake been mill-streams, and were looking 
busily for mills to turn again; there were shoots of 
stream that had once shot fearfully into the air, and 
now sprang up again laughing that they had only fallen 
a foot or two ; — and in the midst of all the gay glitter- 
ing and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the 
midmost depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harm- 
less, with its swallows skimming instead of petreils, and 



STUDIES. 48 

the dear old decrepit town as safe in the embracing 
sweep of it as if it were set in a brooch of sapphire. — 
Prceterita, vol. ii. chap. v. 

MOUNTAINS. 

Mountains are to the rest of the body of the earth 
what violent muscular action is to the body of man. 
The muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the 
mountain, brought out with fierce and convulsive energy, 
full of expression, passion, and strength ; the plains and 
the lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion 
of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant and con- 
cealed beneath the lines of its beauty, yet ruling those 
lines in their every undulation. This, then, is the first 
grand principle of the truth of the earth. The spirit of 
the hills is action ; that of the lowlands, repose ; and 
between these there is to be found every variety of 
motion and of rest ; from the inactive plain, sleeping 
like the firmament, with cities for stars, to the fiery 
peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, 
with the clouds drifting like hair from their bright fore- 
heads, lift up their Titan hands to Heaven, saying, " I 
live forever ! " 

But there is this difference between the action of the 
earth, and that of a living creature, that while the ex- 
erted limb marks its bones and tendons through the flesh, 
the excited earth casts off the flesh altogether, and its 
bones come out from beneath. Mountains are the bones 
of the earth, their highest peaks are invariably those 
parts of its anatomy which in the plains lie buried 



44 JOBN BUSKIN. 

under five and twenty thousand feet of solid thickness 
of superincumbent soil, and which spring up in the 
mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedges, flinging 
their garment of earth away from them on each side. 
The masses of the lower hills are laid over and against 
their sides, like the masses of lateral masonry against 
the skeleton arch of an unfinished bridge, except that 
they slope up to and lean against the central ridge : and, 
finally, upon the slopes of these lower hills are strewed 
the level beds of sprinkled gravel, sand, and clay, which 
form the extent of the champaign. Here then is another 
grand principle of the truth of earth, that the mountains 
must come from under all, and be the support of all ; 
and that everything else must be laid in their arms, heap 
above heap, the plains being the uppermost. Opposed 
to this truth is every appearance of the hills being laid 
upon the plains, or built upon them. Nor is this a truth 
only of the earth on a large scale, for every minor rock 
(in position) comes out from the soil about it as an 
island out of the sea, lifting the earth near it like waves 
beating on its sides. — Modern Faint67's, vol. i, part ii. 
sec. iv. chap. i. 

Examine the nature of your own emotion (if you feel 
it) at the sight of the Alp, and you find all the bright- 
ness of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossamer, on 
a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. 
First, you have a vague idea of its size, coupled with 
wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and 
foundations, then an apprehension of its eternity, a 



STUDIES. 45 

pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and yonr own tran- 
sientness, as of the grass upon its sides ; then, and in 
this very sadness, a sense of strange companionship 
with past generations in seeing what they saw. They 
did not see the clouds that are floating over your head ; 
nor the cottage wall on the other side of the field ; nor 
the road by which you are travelling. But they saw 
that. The wall of granite in the heavens was the same 
to them as to you. They have ceased to look upon it ; 
you will soon cease to look also, and the granite wall will 
be for others. Then, mingled with these more solemn 
imaginations, come the understandings of the gifts and 
glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of all the foun- 
tains that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers 
that are born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant 
valleys that wind between its cliffs, and all the chalets 
that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads 
couched upon its pastures ; while together with the 
thoughts of these, rise strange sympathies with all the 
unknown of human life, and happiness, and death, sig- 
nified by that narrow white flame of the everlasting 
snow, seen so far in the morning sky. — Vol. iii. part 
iv. chap. X. 

Inferior hills ordinarily interrupt, in some degree, 
the richness of the valleys at their feet ; the gray downs 
of Southern England, and treeless coteaux of central 
France, and gray swells of Scottish moor, whatever 
peculiar charms they may possess in themselves, are at 
least destitute of those which belong to the woods and 



46 JOHN BUSKIN, 

fields of the lowlands. But the great mountains lift 
the lowlands 07i their sides. Let the reader imagine, 
first, the appearance of the most varied plain of some 
richly cultivated country 5 let him imagine it dark with 
graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures ; let him 
fill the space of it, to the utmost horizon, with innumer- 
able and changeful incidents of scenery and life; lead- 
ing pleasant streamlets through its meadows, strewing 
clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet 
footpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields 
with happy flocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle ; 
and when he has wearied himself with endless imagin- 
ing, and left no space without some loveliness of its 
own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its infi- 
nite treasures of natural beauty and happy human life, 
gathered up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon 
to the other, like a woven garment; and shaken into 
deep, falling folds, as the robes droop from a king's 
shoulders ; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts 
along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing 
themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears him- 
self back when his horse plunges; and all its villages 
nestling themselves into the new windings of its glens ; 
and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of green- 
sward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, 
and sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud 
here and there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in 
the air ; and he will have as yet, in all this lifted world, 
only the foundation of one of the great Alps. And what- 
ever is lovely in the lowland scenery becomes lovelier in 



STUDIES. 47 

this change : the trees which grew heavily and stiffly 
from the level line of the plain assume strange lines of 
strength and grace as they bend themselves against the 
mountain side ; they breathe more freely, and toss their 
branches more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking 
to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother 
tree : the flowers which on the arable plain fell before 
the plough, now find out for themselves unapproachable 
places, where year by year they gather into happier fel- 
lowship, and fear no evil ; and the streams which in the 
level land crept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, 
now move in showers of silver, and are clothed with 
rainbows and bring health and life wherever the glance 
of their waves can reach. — Vol. iv. part v. chap. vii. 

VEGETATION. 

Plants are, indeed, broadly referable to two great 
classes. The first we may, perhaps, not inexpediently 
call TENTED PLANTS. They live in encampments on the 
ground, as lilies ; or on surfaces of rock, or stems of 
other plants, as lichens and mosses. They live — some 
for a year, some for many years, some for myriads of 
years ; but, perishing, they pass as the tented Arab 
passes : they leave no memorials of themselves, except 
the seed, or bulb, or root, which is to perpetuate the 
race. 

The other great class of plants we may perhaps best 
call BUILDING PLANTS. Thcsc will not live on the ground, 
but eagerly raise edifices above it. Each works hard 
with solemn forethought all its life. Perishing, it leaves 



48 JOHN BUSKIN. 

its work in the form which will be most useful to its 
successors — its own monument, and their inheritance. 
These architectural edifices we call " Trees." , . . 

To us, as artists, or lovers of art, this is the first and 
most vital question concerning a plant : " Has it a fixed 
form or a changing one ? Will it rise only to the height 
of a man — as an ear of corn — and perish like a man ; 
or will it spread its boughs to the sea and branches to 
the river, and enlarge its circle of shade in heaven for a 
thousand years ? " 

This, I repeat, is th.Q first question I ask the plant. 
And as it answers, I range it on one side or the other, 
among those that rest, or those that toil : tent-dwellers, 
who toil not, neither do they spin ; or tree-builders, 
whose days are as the days of a people. . . . 

Again, in questioning the true builders as to their 
modes of work, I find that they also are divisible into 
two great classes. Without in the least wishing the 
reader to accept the fanciful nomenclature, I think he 
may yet most conveniently remember these as " Builders 
with the shield," and '• Builders with the sword." 

Builders with the shield have expanded leaves, more 
or less resembling shields, partly in shape, but still more 
in office ; for under their lifted shadow the young bud 
of the next year is kept from harm. These are the 
gentlest of the builders, and live in pleasant places, 
providing food and shelter for man. Builders with the 
sword, on the contrary, have sharp leaves in the shape 
of swords, and the young buds, instead of being as nu- 
merous as the leaves, crouching each under a leaf -shadow, 



STUDIES. 49 

are few in number, and grow fearlessly, each in the 
midst of a sheaf of swords. These builders live in 
savage places, are sternly dark in colour, and, though 
they give much help to man by their merely physical 
strength, they (with few exceptions) give him no food, 
and imperfect shelter. Their mode of building is ruder 
than that of the shield-builders, and they in many ways 
resemble the pillar-plants of the opposite order. We 
call them generally "Pines."— Vol. v. part vi. chap. ii. 

A sword-builder may be generally considered as a 
shield-builder put under the severest military restraint. 
The graceful and thin leaf is concentrated into a strong, 
narrow, pointed rod ; and the insertion of these rods on 
the stem is in a close and perfectly timed order. . . . 
Other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and 
sway of the ground, clothe it with soft compliance, are 
partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly its com- 
forters. But the pine rises in serene resistance, self- 
contained; nor can I ever without awe stay long under a 
great Alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, 
looking up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the 
inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enormous 
wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the 
one beside it — upright, fixed, spectral, as troops of 
ghosts standing on the walls of Hades, not knowing each 
other — dumb forever. You cannot reach them, can- 
not cry to them ; — those trees never heard human voice ; 
they are far above all sound but of the winds. ISTo foot 
ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. All comfortless they 



50 JOHN RUSEIN. 

stand, between the two eternities of the Vacancy and the 
Rock : yet with such iron will, that the rock itself looks 
bent and shattered beside them — fragile, weak, incon- 
sistent, compared to their dark energy of delicate life, 
and monotony of enchanted pride : — unnumbered, un- 
conquerable. — Vol. V. part vi. chap. ix. 

Break off an elm bough, three feet long, in full leaf, 
and lay it on the table before you, and try to draw it, 
leaf for leaf. It is ten to one if in the whole bough (pro- 
vided you do not twist it about as you work) you 
find one form of a leaf exactly like another ; perhaps you 
will not even have 07ie complete. Every leaf will be 
oblique, or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by 
another, or shaded by another, or have something or 
other the matter with it ; and though the whole bough 
will look graceful and symmetrical, you will scarcely 
be able to tell how or why it does so, since there is not 
one line of it like another. . . . 

But if nature is so various when you have a bough on 
the table before you, what must she be when she retires 
from you, and gives you her whole mass and multitude ? 
The leaves then at the extremities become as fine as 
dust, a mere confusion of points and lines between you 
and the sky, a confusion which you might as well hope 
to draw sea-sand particle by particle, as to imitate leaf 
for leaf. This, as it comes down into the body of the 
tree, gets closer, but never opaque ; it is always trans- 
parent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through 
to the sky ; then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier. 



STUDIES. 51 

the masses of illumined foliage, all dazzling and inex- 
tricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extrem- 
ities ; then, under these, jou get deep passages of broken, 
irregular gloom, passing into transparent green-lighted, 
misty hollows ; the twisted stems glancing through them 
in their pale and entangled infinity, and the shafted sun- 
beams, rained from above, running along the lustrous 
leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again on 
some emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again 
with a faint reflex on the white under-sides of dim 
groups of drooping foliage, the shadows of the upper 
boughs running in gray network down the glossy stems, 
and resting in quiet checkers upon the glittering earth ; 
but all penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, 
inextricable and incomprehensible, except where across 
the labyrinth and the mystery of the dazzling light and 
dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some solitary spray, 
some wreath of two or three motionless large leaves, the 
type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and 
imagine, but can never see. — Vol. i. part ii. sec. vi. 
chap. i. 

The leaves, as we shall see immediately, are the 
feeders of the plant. Their own orderly habits of suc- 
cession must not interfere with their main business of 
finding food. Where the sun and air are, the leaf must 
go, whether it be out of order or not. So, therefore, in 
any group, the first consideration with the j^oung leaves 
is much like that of young bees, how to keep out of 
each other's way, that every one may at once leave its 



52 JOHN BUSKIN. 

neighbours as much free-air pasture as possible, and 
obtain a relative freedom for itself. This would be 
a quite simple matter, and produce other simply bal- 
anced forms, if each branch, with open air all round it, 
had nothing to think of but reconcilement of interests 
among its own leaves. But every branch has others to 
meet or to cross, sharing with them, in various advan- 
tage, what shade, or sun, or rain is to be had. Hence 
every single leaf-cluster presents the general aspect of a 
little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but 
obliged to get their living by various shifts, concessions, 
and infringements of the family rules, in order not to 
invade the privileges of other people in their neighbour- 
hood. 

And in the arrangement of these concessions there is 
an exquisite sensibility among the leaves. They do not 
grow each to his own liking, till they run against one 
another, and then turn back sulkily ; but by a watchful 
instinct, far apart, they anticipate their companions' 
courses, as ships at sea, and in every new unfolding of 
their edged tissue, guide themselves by the sense of 
each other's remote presence, and by a watchful pene- 
tration of leafy purpose in the far future. So that every 
shadow which one casts on the next, and every glint of 
sun which each reflects to the next, and every touch 
which in toss of storm each receives from the next, aid 
or arrest the development of their advancing form, and 
direct, as will be safest and best, the curve of every 
fold and the current of every vein. 

And this peculiar character exists in all the structures 



STUDIES. 58 

thus developed, that they are always visibly the result 
of a volition on the part of the leaf, meeting an ex- 
ternal force or fate, to which it is never passively 
subjected. Upon it, as on a mineral in the course of 
formation, the great merciless influences of the universe, 
and the oppressive powers of minor things immediately 
near it, act continually. Heat and cold, gravity and the 
other attractions, windy pressure, or local and unhealthy 
restraint, must, in certain inevitable degrees, affect the 
whole of its life. But it is life which they affect ; — a 
life of progress and will, — not a merely passive accu- 
mulation of substance. This may be seen by a single 
glance. The mineral — suppose an agate in the course 
of formation — shows in every line nothing but a dead 
submission to surrounding force. Flowing, or congeal- 
ing, its substance is here repelled, there attracted, unre- 
sistingly to its place, and its languid sinuosities follow 
the clefts of the rock that contains them, in servile 
deflexion and compulsory cohesion, impotently calcu- 
lable, and cold. But the leaf, full of fears and affections, 
shrinks and seeks, as it obeys. Not thrust, but awed 
into its retiring ; not dragged, but won to its advance ; 
not bent aside, as by a bridle, into new courses of 
growth : but persuaded and converted through tender 
continuance of voluntary change. 

The mineral and it differing thus widely in separate 
being, they differ no less in modes of companionship. 
The mineral crystals group themselves neither in suc- 
cession, nor in sympathy ; but great and small recklessly 
strive for place, and deface or distort each other as they 



54 * JOHN BUSKIN. 

gather into opponent asperities. The confused crowd 
fills the rock cavity, hanging together in a glittering, 
yet sordid heap, in which nearly every crystal, owing to 
their vain contention, is imperfect, or impure. Here and 
there one, at the cost and in defiance of the rest, rises 
into unwarped shape or unstained clearness. But the 
order of the leaves is one of soft and subdued concession. 
Patiently each awaits its appointed time, accepts its 
prepared place, yields its required observance. Under 
every oppression of external accident, the group yet 
follows a law laid down in its own heart ; and all the 
members of it, whether in sickness or health, in strength 
or languor, combine to carry out this first and last heart 
law; receiving, and seeming to desire for themselves and 
for each other, only life which they may communicate, 
and loveliness which they may reflect. — Vol. v. part vi. 
chap. iv. 

It is strange to think of the gradually diminished 
power and withdrawn freedom among the order of the' 
leaves — from the sweep of the chestnut and gadding of 
the vine, down to the close shrinking trefoil, and con- 
tented daisy, pressed on earth ; and, at last, to the 
leaves that are not merely close to earth, but themselves 
a part of it ; fastened down to it by their sides, here and 
there only a wrinkled edge rising from the granite crys- 
tals. We have found beauty in the tree yielding fruit, 
and in the herb yielding seed. How of the herb yield- 
ing 710 seed, the fruitless, flowerless lichen of the rock ? 

Lichen, and mosses (though these last in their luxuri- 



STUDIES. 55 

ance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both for the most 
part humblest of the green things that live), — how of 
these ? Meek creatures ! the first mercy of the earth, 
veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks ; creatures 
full of pity, covering with strange and tender honor the 
scarred disgrace of ruin, — laying quiet fingers on the 
trembling stones, to teach them rest. No words, that I 
know of, will say what these mosses are. None are deli- 
cate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. 
How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and 
beaming green, — the starred divisions of rubied bloom, 
fine-filmed, as if the Kock Spirits could spin porphyry as 
we do glass, — the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes 
of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every 
fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken 
change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for 
simplest, sweetest offices of grace. They will not be 
gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token ; but 
of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied 
child his pillow. 

And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last 
gift to us. When all other service is vain, from plant 
and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichens take up their 
watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the 
gift-bearing grasses, have done their part for a time, but 
these do service forever. Trees for the builder's yard, 
flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, 
moss for the grave. 

Yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are 
the most honored of the earth-children. Unfading, as 



5Q JOHN BUSKIN. 

motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn 
wastes not. Strong in loveliness, they neither blanch in 
heat nor pine in frost. To them, slow-fingered, constant- 
hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal 
tapestries of the hills ; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, 
the tender framing of their endless imagery. Sharing 
the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also 
its endurance : and while the winds of departing spring 
scatter the white hawthorn blossoms like drifted snow, 
and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping 
of its cowslip-gold, — far above, among the mountains, 
the silver lichen-spots rest, star-like, on the stone ; and 
the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder 
western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. 
— Vol. V. part vi. chap. x. 



VIGNETTES. §7 



VIGNETTES. 

THE RISING HEIGHT. 

The mountain lies in the morning light, like a level 
vapor ; its gentle lines of ascent are scarcely felt by the 
eye ; it rises without effort or exertion, by the mighti- 
ness of its mass ; every slope is full of slumber ; and we 
know not how it has been exalted, until we find it laid 
as a floor for the walking of the eastern clouds. — 
Modern Painters^ vol. i. part ii. sec. iv. chap. iii. 

THE SNOW-DRIFT. 

In the range of inorganic' nature, I doubt if any ob- 
ject can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, 
deep snow-drift, seen under warm light. Its curves are 
of inconceivable perfection and changefulness, its sur- 
face and transparency alike exquisite, its light and shade 
of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows 
sharp, pale, and of heavenly color, the reflected lights 
intense and multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet 
occurrences of transmitted light. — Vol. i. part ii. sec. iv. 
chap. ii. 

RAIN-CLOUDS AT DAWN. 

Often, in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the 
dawn form soft level fields, which melt imperceptibly 
into the blue: or when of less extent, gather into 



58 JOHN BUSKIN. 

apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud 
above ; and all these bathed throughout in an un- 
speakable light of pure rose-colour, and purple, and 
amber, and blue ; not shining, but misty-soft ; the barred 
masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or 
tresses of cloud, like floss silk ; looking as if each knot 
were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain. No clouds 
form such skies, none are so tender, various, inimitable. 
— Vol. V. part vii. chap. iv. 

ALPINE ARCHITECTURE. 

The longer I stayed among the Alps, and the more 
closely I examined them, the more I was struck by the 
one broad fact of their being a vast Alpine plateau, or 
mass of elevated land. . . . And, for the most part, the 
great peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, 
but remain, like the keeps of castles, far withdrawn, 
surrounded, league beyond league, by comparatively 
level fields of mountain, over which the lapping sheets 
of glacier writhe and flow, foaming about the feet of the 
dark central crests like the surf of an enormous sea- 
breaker hurled over a rounded rock, and islanding some 
fragment of it in the midst. — Vol. iv. part v. chap. xiii. 

THE MARRIAGE OF THE LEAVES. 

You will find that, in fact, all plants are composed 
of essentially two parts — the leaf and root — one lov- 
ing the light, the other darkness ; one liking to be clean, 
the other to be dirty ; one liking to grow for the most 
part up, the other for the most part down ; and each hav- 



VIGNETTES. 59 

ing faculties and purposes of its own. But the pure one, 
which loves the light, has, above all things, the purpose 
of being married to another leaf, and having child-leaves, 
and children's children of leaves, to make the earth fair 
forever. And when the leaves marry, they put on wed- 
ding-robes, and are more glorious than Solomon in all his 
glory, and they have feasts of honey, and we call them 
" Flowers." — Fors Clavigera, letter v. 

DISTANT PEAKS. 

Though the greater clearness of the upper air permits 
the high summits to be seen with extraordinary distinct- 
ness, yet they never can by any possibility have dark or 
deep shadows, or intense dark relief against a light. Clear 
they may be, but faint they must be, and their great 
and prevailing characteristic, as distinguished from other 
mountains, is want of apparent solidity. They rise in 
the morning light rather like sharp shades, cast up into 
the sky, than solid earth. Their lights are pure, roseate, 
and cloud-like — their shadows transparent, pale, and 
opalescent, and often indistinguishable from the air 
around them, so that the mountain-top is seen in the 
heaven only by its flakes of motionless fire. — Modern 
Painte7'Sj vol. i. part ii. sec. iv. chap. ii. 

THE WATERFALL. 

... A broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a for- 
midable precipice over the Arve. An almost isolated 
rock promontory, many-colored, rises at the end of it. 
On the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which a 



60 JOHN BUSKIN. 

little cascade falls, literally down among the pines, for 
it is so light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed 
pearl in the sun, that the pines don't know it from mist, 
and grow through it without minding. Underneath, 
there is only the mossy silence, and above, forever, the 
snow of the nameless Aiguille. — Vol. v. part vi. chap. ix. 

THE CUMULUS. 

It is actually some two years since I last saw a noble 
cumulus cloud under full light. I chanced to be standing 
under the Victoria Tower at Westminster, when the 
largest mass of them floated past, that day, from the 
north-west ; and I was more impressed than ever yet by 
the awfulness of the cloud-form, and its unaccountable- 
ness, in the present state of our knowledge. The Vic- 
toria Tower, seen against it, had no magnitude : it was 
like looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post. The domes 
of cloud-snow were heaped as definitely ; their broken 
flanks were as gray and firm as rocks, and the whole 
mountain, of a compass and height in heaven which only 
became more and more inconceivable as the eye strove 
to ascend it, was passing behind the tower with a steady 
march, whose swiftness must in reality have been that 
of a tempest : yet, along all the ravines of vapor, preci- 
pice kept pace with precipice, and not one thrust another. 
— The Eaglets Nest, vii. sec. 30. 

THE BREAKER ON THE ROCKS. 

One moment, a flint cave : the next, a marble pillar : 
the next, a mere white fleece thickening the thundery 
rain. — The Harbors of England, 



VIGNETTES. 61 



THE SPIRIT OF THE SOLDANELLA. 

I have already noticed the example of very pure and 
high typical beauty which is to be found in the lines 
and gradations of unsullied snow : if, passing to the 
edge of a sheet of it, upon the lower Alps, early in May, 
we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little 
round openings pierced in it, and through these, emerg- 
ent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower whose small, dark, 
purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the 
icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly wondering at its 
own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after 
its hard-won victory ; we shall be, or we ought to be, 
moved by a totally different impression of loveliness 
from that which we receive among the dead ice and the 
idle clouds. There is now uttered to us a call for sym- 
pathy, now offered to us an image of moral purpose and 
achievement, which, however unconscious or senseless 
the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot 
be heard without affection, nor contemplated without 
worship, by any of us whose heart is rightly tuned, or 
whose mind is clearly and surely sighted. — 3Iodern 
Painters, vol. ii. part iii. ch. xii. 



62 JOHN RUSKIN. 



INTERPEETATIONS. 

THE EARTH-VEIL. 

What infinite wonderfulness there is in this vegeta- 
tion, considered, as indeed it is, as the means by which 
the earth becomes the companion of man — his friend 
and his teacher ! In the conditions which we have 
traced in its rocks, there could only be seen preparation 
for his existence ; — the characters which enable him to 
live on it safely, and to work with it easily — in all 
these it has been inanimate and passive ; but vegetation 
is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of 
man. The earth in its depths must remain dead and 
cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change ; but at 
its surface, which human beings look upon and deal 
with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange 
intermediate being ; which breathes, but has no voice ; 
moves, but cannot leave its appointed place ; passes 
through life without consciousness, to death without 
bitterness ; wears the beauty of youth without its pas- 
sion ; and declines to the weakness of age, without its 
regret. 

And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely 
subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, 
having just the greater power as we have the less respon- 
sibility for our treatment of the unsuffering creature, 



INTERPRETATIONS. 63 

most of the pleasures which we need from the external 
world are gathered, and most of the lessons we need 
are Avritten, all kinds of precious grace and teaching 
being united in this link between the Earth and 
Man : wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, 
desire, and discipline ; God's daily preparation of the 
earth for him, with beautiful means of life. First, a 
carpet to make it soft for him ; then, a colored fantasy 
of embroidery thereon ; then, tall spreading of foliage to 
shade him from sunheat, and shade also the fallen rain, 
that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but 
stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout 
wood to bear this leafage : easily to be cut, yet tough 
and light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance- 
shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper) ; use- 
less it had been, if harder ; useless, if less fibrous ; use- 
less, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of 
leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth ; the 
strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter 
winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, in- 
numerable according to the need, are made beautiful and 
palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy 
of man, or provision for his service : cold juice or glow- 
ing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving 
resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm: 
and all these presented in ffcrms of endless change. 
Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees 
and aspects ; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, 
or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; 
mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms 



64 JOHN BUSKIN. 

of ages, or wavings to and fro v/ith faintest- pulse of 
summer streamlet. Koots cleaving the strength of rock, 
or binding the transience of the sand ; crests basking in 
sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and 
lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled fields 
beneath every wave of ocean — clothing with variegated, 
everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, 
or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion 
and simplest joy of humanity. — Vol. v. part vi. chap. i. 

THE CLOUD-BALANCINGS. 

We have seen that when the earth had to be prepared 
for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of inter- 
mediate being was spread between him and its darkness, 
in which were joined, in a subdued measure, the stability 
and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perish- 
ing of mankind. 

But the heavens, also, had to be prepared for his hab- 
itation. 

Between their burning light, — their deep vacuity, 
and man, as between the earth's gloom of iron substance 
and man, a veil had to be spread of intermediate being ; 
— which should appease the unendurable glory to the 
level of human feebleness, and sign the changeless 
motion of the heavens with a semblance of human vicis- 
situde. • 

Between the earth and man arose the leaf. Between 
the heaven and man came the cloud. His life being 
partly as the falling leaf, and partly as the flying vapour. 

Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are ? 



INTERPRETATIONS. ^b 

We had some talk about them long ago, and perhaps 
thought their nature, though at that time not clear to 
us, would be easily enough understandable when we put 
ourselves seriously to make it out. Shall we begin with 
one or two easiest questions ? 

That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the 
valley level and white, through which the tops of the trees 
rise as if through an inundation — why is it so heavy ? 
and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail 
that it will melt away utterly into splendor of morning 
when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more ? 
Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as 
of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high 
sun full on their fiery flanks — why are they so light, — 
their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of 
Alps ? why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, 
but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, 
while the valley vapour gains again upon the earth like a 
shroud ? 

I know not if the reader will think at first that ques- 
tions like these are easily answered. So far from it, I 
rather believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds 
never will be understood by us at all. " Knowest thou 
the balancings of the clouds ? " Is the answer ever to 
be one of pride ? '• The wondrous works of Him which 
is perfect in knowledge ? " Is our knowledge ever to 
be so ? — Vol. V. part vii. chap. i. 



6Q JOHN RUSKm. 

THE CLOUD IN THE BIBLE. 

The " clouds " and " heavens " are used as inter- 
changeable words in those Psalms which most distinctly 
set forth the power of God : " He bowed the heavens 
also, and came down ; He made darkness pavilions round 
about Him, dark waters and thick clouds of the skies." 
. . . And, again, " His excellency is over Israel, and His 
strength is in the clouds." Again : " The clouds poured 
out water, the skies sent out a sound, the voice of Thy 
thunder was in the heaven." Again : " Clouds and 
darkness are round about Him, righteousness and judg- 
ment are the habitation of His throne ; the heavens 
declare His righteousness, and all the people see His 
glory." 

In all these passages the meaning is unmistakable, if 
they possess definite meaning at all. We are too apt to 
take them merely for sublime and vague imagery, and 
therefore gradually to lose the apprehension of their life 
and power. The expression, " He bowed the heavens," 
for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers as a 
magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar 
and fearful manifestation of God's power to the writer 
of the Psalm in which the words occur. But the expres- 
sion either has plain meaning, or it has 710 meaning. 
Understand by the term "heavens" the compass of 
infinite space around the earth, and the expression 
"bowed the heavens," however sublime, is wholly 
without meaning ; infinite space cannot be bent or 
bowed. But understand by the " heavens " the veil of 



INTERPRETATIONS. 67 

clouds above the earth, and the expression is neither 
hyperbolical nor obscure ; it is pure, plain, and accu- 
rate truth, and it describes God, not as revealing him- 
self in any peculiar way to David, but doing what He 
is still doing before our own eyes day by day. By 
accepting the words in their simple sense, we are thus 
led to apprehend the immediate presence of the Deity, 
and His purpose of manifesting Himself as near us when- 
ever the storm-cloud stoops upon its course ; while by 
our vague and inaccurate acceptance of the words, we 
remove the idea of His presence far from us, into a 
region which we can neither see nor know ; and gradu- 
ally, from the close realization of a living God who 
" maketh the clouds His chariot," we refine and explain 
ourselves into dim and distant suspicion of an inactive 
God, inhabiting inconceivable places, and fading into 
the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of nature. . . . 
I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of 
His own creation as under the ordinary limits of human 
knowledge and imagination it would be received by a 
simple-minded man ; . . . and I understand the making 
the firmament to signify that, so far as man is concerned, 
most magnificent ordinance of the clouds ; — the ordi- 
nance, that as the great plain of waters was formed on 
the face of the earth, so also a plain of waters should 
be stretched along the height of air, and the face of the 
cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this 
upper and heavenly plain should be of waters, as it were, 
glorified in their nature, no longer quenching the fire, 
but now bearing fire in their own bosoms ; no longer 



68 JOHN BUSKIN. 

murmuring only when the winds raise them or rocks 
divide, but answering each other with their own voices 
from pole to pole ; no longer restrained by established 
shores, and guided through unchanging channels, but 
going forth at their pleasure, like the armies of the 
angels, and choosing their encampments upon the 
heights of the hills ; no longer hurried downwards for- 
ever, moving but to fall, nor lost in lightless accumula- 
tion of the abyss, but covering the east and west with 
the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom of the 
farther infinite with a vesture of divers colours, of which 
the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries 
flame. 

This, I believe, is the ordinance of the firmament; 
and it seems to me that in the midst of the material 
nearness of these heavens, God means us to acknowledge 
His own immediate presence as visiting, judging, and 
blessing us. " The earth shook, the heavens also 
dropped, at the presence of God." "He doth set His 
bow in the cloud," and thus renews, in the sound of every 
drooping swathe of rain, His promises of everlasting love. 
" In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun ; " whose 
burning ball, which without the firmament would be seen 
as an intolerable and scorching circle in the blackness of 
vacuity, is by that firmament surrounded with gorgeous 
service, and tempered by mediatorial ministries ; by the 
firmament of clouds the golden pavement is spread for 
His chariot wheels at morning ; by the firmament of 
clouds the temple is built for His presence to fill with 
light at noon ; by the firmament of clouds the purple 



INTERPRETATIONS. 69 

veil is closed at evening round the sanctuary of His 
rest ; by the mists of the firmament His implacable 
light is divided, and its separated fierceness appeased 
into the soft blue that fills the depth of distance with 
its bloom, and the flush with which the mountains burn 
as they drink the overflowing of the day-spring. And 
in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, 
through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem 
to set forth the stooping of His own majesty to men, 
upon the throne of the firmament. As the Creator of all 
the worlds, and the Inhabiter of Eternity, we cannot 
behold Him ; but as the Judge of the earth and the 
Preserver of men, those heavens are indeed His dwelling- 
place. " Swear not, neither by heaven, for it is God's 
throne ; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool." And 
all those passings to and fro of fruitful shower and 
grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces 
built about the horizon, and voices of moaning winds 
and threatening thunders, and glories of colored robe and 
cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the accept- 
ance, and distinctness, and dearness of the simple words, 
^' Our Father which art in heaven." — Vol. iv. part v. 
chap. vi. 

THE SECRET OF THE MIST. 

Mist of some sort, or mirage, or confusion of light, or 
of cloud, are the general facts ; the distance may vary 
in different climates at which the effects of mist begin, 
but they are always present ; and therefore, in all prob- 
ability, it is meant that we should enjoy them. 

Nor does it seem to me in any wise difficult to under- 



70 JOHN BUSKIN. 

stand why tliey should be thus appointed for enjoyment. 
In former parts of this work we were able to trace a 
certain delightfulness in every visible feature of natural 
things which was typical of any great spiritual truth ; 
surely, therefore, we need not wonder now, that mist 
and all its phenomena have been made delightful to us, 
since our happiness as thinking beings must depend 
upon our being content to accept only partial knowledge, 
even in those matters which chiefly concern us. If we 
insist upon perfect intelligibility and complete declara- 
tion in every moral subject, we shall instantly fall into 
misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and power of 
energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe 
and live in the cloud ; content to see it opening here and 
closing there; rejoicing to catch through the thinnest 
films of it, glimpses of stable and substantial things; 
but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, 
and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the 
untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite 
clearness wearied. — Vol. iv. part v. chap. v. 

NATURAL MYTHS : BIRD AND SERPENT. 

We have two orders of animals to take some note of, 
which will illustrate this matter very sufficiently for us. 

The orders of animals are the serpent and the bird ; 
the serpent, in which the breath, or spirit, is less than 
in any other creature, and the earth-power greatest : — 
the bird, in which the breath, or spirit, is more full than 
in any other creature, and the earth-power least. 

We will take the bird first. It is little more than a 



INTERPRETATION'S. 71 

drift of the air, brought into form by plumes ; the air is 
in all its quills, it breathes through its whole frame and 
flesh, and glows with air in its flying, like a blown 
flame: it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, 
outraces it; is the air, conscious of itself, conquering 
itself, ruling itself. 

Also, into the throat of the bird is given the voice of 
the air. All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, use- 
less in sweetness, is knit together in its song. As we 
may imagine the wild form of the cloud closed into the 
perfect form of the bird's wings, so the wild voice of 
the cloud, into its perfect and commanded voice ; un- 
wearied, rippling through the clear heaven in its glad- 
ness, interpreting all intense passion through the soft 
spring nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of choir 
at daybreak, or lisping and twittering among the boughs 
and hedges through heat of day, like little winds that 
only make the cowslip bells shake, and rufi&e the petals 
of the wild rose. 

Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put the colors 
of the air : on these the gold of the cloud, that cannot 
be gathered by any covetousness ; the rubies of the 
clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but are Athena ; 
the vermilion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the 
cloud-crest, and the snow of the cloud and its shadow, 
and the melted blue of the deep wells of the sky — all 
these, seized by the creating spirit, and woven by Athena 
herself into films and threads of plume ; with wave on 
wave following and fading along breast, and throat, and 
opened wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and 



72 JOHN BUSKIN. 

the sifting of the sea-sand ; — even the white down of 
the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger 
plumes, seen but too soft for touch. 

And so, the Spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, 
this created form ; and it becomes, through twenty cent- 
uries, the symbol of divine help, descending, as the 
Fire, to speak, but as the Dove, to bless. 

Next, in the serpent, we approach the source of a 
group of myths, world-wide, founded on great and 
common human instincts, respecting which I must note 
one or two points which bear intimately on all our sub- 
ject. For it seems to me. that the scholars who are at 
present occupied in interpretation of human myths 
have most of them forgotten that there are any such 
things as natural myths ; and that the dark sayings of 
men may be both difficult to read, and not always worth 
reading ; but the dark sayings of nature will probably 
become clearer for the looking into, and will very certainly 
be worth reading. And, indeed, all guidance to the right 
sense of the human and variable myths, will probably 
depend on our first getting at the sense of the natural 
and invariable ones. The dead hieroglyph may have 
meant this or that — the living hieroglyph means always 
the same ; but remember, it is just as much a hieroglyph 
as the other ; nay, more, — a " sacred or reserved sculp- 
ture," a thing with an inner language. The serpent 
crest of the king's crown, or of the god's, on the pillars 
of Egypt, is a mystery ; but the serpent itself, glid- 
ing past the pillar's foot, is it less a mystery ? Is 
there, indeed, no tongue, except the mute forked flash 



IN TEEPEE TA TI0N8. 73 

from its lips, in that running brook of horror on the 
ground ? 

Why that horror ? We all feel it ; yet how imagina- 
tive it is, how clisproportioned to the real strength ol 
the creature ! There is more poison in an ill-kept drain, 

— in a pool of dish-washings at a cottage door, than in 
the deadliest asp of Nile. Every back-yard which you 
look down into from the railway, as it carries you out 
by Vauxhall or Deptford, holds its coiled serpent : all 
the walls of those ghastly suburbs are enclosure of tank 
temples for serpent-worship ; yet you feel no horror in 
looking down into them, as you would if you saw the 
livid scales and lifted head. There is more venom, 
mortal, inevitable, in a single word, sometimes, or in 
the gliding entrance of a wordless thought, than ever 
" Vanti Libia con sua venaP But that horror is of the 
myth, not of the creature. There are myriads lower 
than this, and more loathsome, in the scale of being ; 
the links between dead matter and animation drift 
everywhere unseen. But it is the strength of the base 
element that is so dreadful in the serpent : it is the very 
omnipotence of the earth. That rivulet of smooth silver 

— how does it flow, think you ? It literally roAvs on 
the earth, with every scale for an oar ; it bites the dust 
with the ridges of its body. Watch it, when it moves 
slowly : — A wave, but without wind ; a current, but 
with no fall ! all the body moving at the same instant, 
yet some of it to one side, some to another, or some for- 
ward, and the rest of the coil backwards ; but all with 
the same calm will and equal way — no contraction, no 



74 JOHN RUSEIN. 

extension ; one soundless, causeless march of sequent 
rings, and spectral procession of spotted dust, with dis- 
solution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle it ; 

— the winding stream will become a twisted arrow; 

— the wave of poisoned life will lash through the 
grasses like a cart lane. It scarcely breathes with its 
one lung (the other shrivelled and abortive) ; it is pass- 
ive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot, like a stone ; 
yet " it can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, out- 
leap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush the 
tiger." It is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power 
of the earth, — of the entire earthly nature. As the 
bird is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed 
power of the dust ; as the bird the symbol of the spirit 
of life, so this of the grasp and sting of death. — The 
Queen of the Air, sees. 64-68. 

THE MISSION OF NATURE. 

The great mechanical impulses of the age, of which 
most of us are so proud, are a mere passing fever, half 
speculative, half childish. People will discover at last 
that royal roads to anything can no more be laid in iron 
than they can in dust ; that there are, in fact, no royal 
roads to anywhere worth going to ; that if there were, it 
would that instant cease to be worth going to, I mean so 
far as the things to be obtained are in any way esti- 
mable in terms of price. For there are two classes of 
precious things in the world : those that God gives us 
for nothing — sun, air, and life (both mortal life and 
immortal) ; and the secondarily precious things which 



INTERPRETATIONS. 75 

He gives us for a price : these secondarily precious 
things, worldly wine and milk, can only be bought for 
definite money ; they never can be cheapened. No 
cheating nor bargaining will ever get a single thing out 
of nature's " establishment " at half-price. Do we want 
to be strong ? — we must work. To be hungry ? — we 
must starve. To be happy ? — we must be kind. To 
be wise ? — we must look and think. No changing of 
place at a hundred miles an hour, nor making of stuffs 
a thousand yards a minute, will make us one whit 
stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in 
the world than men could see, walked they ever so 
slowly ; they will see it no better for going fast. And 
they will at last, and soon, too, find out that their 
grand inventions for conquering (as they think) space 
and time do in reality conquer nothing; for space 
and time are, in their own essence, unconquerable, and 
besides did not want any sort of conquering ; they 
wanted using. A fool always wants to shorten space 
and time : a wise man wants to lengthen both. A fool 
wants to kill space and kill time : a wise man, first to 
gain them, then to animate them. Your railroad, when 
you come to understand it, is only a device for making 
the world smaller : and as for being able to talk from 
place to place, that is, indeed, well and convenient ; but 
suppose you have, originally, nothing to say. We shall 
be obliged at last to confess, what we should long 
ago have known, that the really precious things are 
thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good 
to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm 



76 JOHN BUSKIN. 

to go slow ; for his glory is not at all in going, but in 
being. . . . 

And I am Utopian and enthusiastic enough to believe, 
that the time will come ivhen the world will discover 
this. It has now made its experiments in every possible 
direction but the right one ; and it seems that it must, at 
last, try the right one, in a mathematical necessity. It 
has tried fighting, and preaching, and fasting, buying 
and selling, pomp and parsimony, pride and humiliation, 
— every possible manner of existence in which it could 
conjecture there was any happiness or dignity; and all 
the while, as it bought, sold, and fought, and fasted, and 
wearied itself with policies, and ambitions, and self- 
denials, God had placed its real happiness in the keeping 
of the little mosses of the wayside, and of the clouds of 
the firmament. Now and then a weary king, or a tor- 
mented slave, found out where the true kingdoms of the 
world were, and possessed himself, in a furrow or two 
of garden ground, of a truly infinite dominion. But the 
world would not believe their report, and went on tram- 
pling down the mosses, and forgetting the clouds, and 
seeking happiness in its own way, until, at last, blunder- 
ing and late, came natural science ; and in natural science 
not only the observation of things, but the finding out 
of new uses for them. Of course the world, having a 
choice left to it, went wrong, as usual, and thought that 
these mere materia? uses were to be the sources of its 
happiness. It got the clouds packed into iron cylinders, 
and made it carry its wise self at their own cloud 
pace. It got weavable fibres out of the mosses, and 



INTERPRETATIONS. 77 

made clothes for itself, cheap and fine, — here was hap- 
piness at last. To go as fast as the clouds, and manufac- 
ture everything out of anything, — here was paradise, 
indeed ! 

And now, when, in a little while, it is unparadised 
again, if there were any other mistake that the world 
could make, it would of course make it. But I see not 
that there is any other ; and, standing fairly at its wits' 
ends, having found that going fast, when it is used to 
it, is no more paradisaical than going slow ; and that all 
the prints and cottons in Manchester cannot make it 
comfortable in its mind, I do verily believe it will come, 
finally, to understand that God paints the clouds and 
shapes the moss-fibres, that men may be happy in seeing 
Him at His work, and that in resting quietly beside 
Him, and watching His working, and — according to the 
power He has communicated to ourselves, and the guid- 
ance He grants, — in carrying out His purposes of peace 
and charity among all His creatures, are the only real 
happinesses that ever were, or ever will be, possible to 
mankind. — Modern Painters, vol. iii. part iv. ch. xvii. 

THE LAW OF HELP. 

Perhaps the best, though the most familiar example 
we could take of the nature and power of consistence, 
will be that of the possible changes in the dust we 
tread on. 

Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a 
more absolute type of impurity than the mud or slime 
of a damp, overtrodden path in the outskirts of a manu- 



78 JOHN BUSKIN. 

facturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because 
that is mixed with animal refuse ; but take merely an 
ounce or two of the blackest slime of a beaten footpath 
on a rainy day, near a large manufacturing town. 

That slime we shall find in most cases composed of 
clay (or brick-dust, which is burnt clay) mixed with soot, 
a little sand, and water. All these elements are at help- 
less war with each other, and destroy reciprocally each 
other's nature and power, competing and fighting for 
place at every tread of your foot ; — sand squeezing out 
clay, and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling 
everywhere and defiling the whole. Let us suppose that 
this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its 
elements gather together, like to like, so that their atoms 
may get into the closest relations possible. 

Let the clay begin. Bidding itself of all foreign sub- 
stance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very 
beautiful ; and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be 
made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept 
in kings' palaces. But such artificial consistence is not 
its best. Leave it still quiet to follow its own instinct 
of unity, and it becomes not only white, but clear ; not 
only clear, but hard ; not only clear and hard, but so set 
that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and 
gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the 
rest. We call it then a sapphire. 

Such being the consummation of the clay, we give 
similar permission of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, 
first, a white earth, then proceeds to grow clear and 
hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely 



INTEEPEETA TIONS. 7 9 

fine, parallel lines, wliicli have the power of reflecting 
not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, 
and red rays in the greatest beauty in which they can 
be seen through any fired material whatsoever. We 
call it then an opal. 

In next order, the soot sets to work ; it cannot make 
itself white at first, but, instead of being discouraged, 
tries harder and harder, and comes out clear at last, and 
the hardest thing in the world ; and for the blackness 
that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting 
all the rays of the sun at once in the vividest blaze that 
any solid thing can shoot. We call it then a diamond. 

Last of all the water purifies or unites itself, contented 
enough if it only reach the form of a dew-drop ; but if 
we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, 
it crystallizes into the shape of a star. 

And for the ounce of slime which we had by political 
economy of competition, we have by political economy 
of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set 
in the midst of a star of snow. — Vol. v. pt. xiv. ch. i. 

LIVING NATURE. 

. . . This force, now properly called life, or breathing, 
or spirit, is continually creating its own shells of defi- 
nite shape out of the wreck round it : and this is what I 
meant by saying in the " Ethics of the Dust," " You 
may always stand by Form against Force." For the 
mere force of junction is not spirit ; but the power that 
catches out of chaos charcoal, water, lime, or what not, 
and fastens them down into a given form, is properly 



80 JOHN BUSKIN. 

called " spirit ; " and we shall not diminish but strengthen 
our conception of this creative energy by recognizing its 
presence in lower states of matter than our own ; such 
recognition being enforced upon us by a delight we in- 
stinctively receive from all the forms of matter which 
manifest it ; and yet more, by the glorifying of those 
forms, in the parts of them that are most animated, 
with the colours that are pleasantest to our senses. The 
most familiar instance of this is the best, and also the 
most wonderful, the bloss'oming of plants. 

The Spirit in the plant, — that is to say, its power of 
gathering dead matter out of the wreck round it, and 
shaping it into its own chosen shape, — is, of course, 
strongest at the moment of its flowering, for it then not 
only gathers, but forms, with the greatest energy. 

And where this Life is in it at full power, its form 
becomes invested with aspects that are chiefly delightful 
to our own human passions ; namely, first, with the 
loveliest outlines of shape ; and, secondly, with the 
most brilliant phases of the primary colours, blue, yellow, 
and red, or white, the unison of all ; and, to make it all 
more strange, this time of peculiar and perfect glory is 
associated with relations of the plants or blossoms to 
each other, correspondent to the joy of love in human 
creatures, and having the same object in the continuance 
of the race. Only, with respect to plants, as animals, 
we are wrong in speaking as if the object of this strong 
life were only the bequeathing of itself. The flower is 
the end or proper object of the seed, not the seed of the 
flower. The reason for seeds is that flowers may be j 



INTEBPEETATIONS. 81 

not the reason of flowers that seeds may be. The flower 
itself is the creature which the spirit makes ; only, in 
connection with its perfectness, is placed the giving 
birth to its successor. . . . 

The main fact then about a flower is that it is the 
part of the plant's form developed at the moment of its 
intensest life : and this inner rapture is usually marked 
externally for us by the flush of one or more of the 
primary colours. 

In all cases, the presence of the strongest life is 
asserted by characters, in which the human sight takes 
pleasure, and which seem prepared with distinct refer- 
ence to us, or rather, bear, in being delightful, evidence 
of having been produced by the power of the same 
spirit as our own. 

And we are led to feel this still more strongly because 
all the distinctions of species, both in plants and 
animals, appear to have similar connection with human 
character. Whatever the origin of species may be, or 
however these species, once formed, may be influenced 
by external accident, the groups into which birth or 
accident reduces them have distinct relation to the spirit 
of man. . . . 

It is perfectly possible, and ultimately conceivable, 
that the crocodile and the lamb may have descended 
from the same ancestral atom of protoplasm ; and that 
the physical laws of the operation of calcareous slime 
and of meadow grass on that protoplasm may in time 
have developed the opposite natures and aspects of the 
living frames ; but the practically important fact for us 



82 JOHN BUSKIN. 

is the existence of a power whicli creates that calcare- 
ous earth itself; . . . and that the calcareous earth, 
soft, shall beget crocodiles, and, dry and hard, sheep; 
and that the aspects and qualities of these two products 
shall be, the one repellent to the spirit of man, the 
other attractive to it, in a quite inevitable way ; repre- 
senting to him states of moral evil and good; and 
becoming myths to him of destruction or redemption, 
and, in the most literal sense, " words " of God. 

And the force of these facts cannot be escaped from 
by the thought that there are species innumerable, 
passing into each other by regular gradations, out of 
which we choose what we most love or dread, and say 
they were indeed prepared for us. . . . 

Observe again and again, with respect to all these 
divisions and powers of plants ; it does not matter in 
the least by what concurrences of circumstance or 
necessity they may gradually have been developed : the 
concurrence of circumstance is itself the supreme and 
inexplicable fact. We always come at last to a forma- 
tive cause, which directs the circumstance, and mode of 
meeting it. If you ask an ordinary botanist the reason 
of the form of a leaf, he will tell you it is a " developed 
tubercle," and that its ultimate form " is owing to the 
directions of its vascular threads." But what directs 
its vascular threads ? " They are seeking for some- 
thing they want," he will probably answer. What 
made them want that ? What made them seek for it 
thus? . . . 

There is no answer. But the sum of it all is, that 



INTERPRETATIONS. 83 

over the entire surface of the earth and its waters, as 
influenced by the power of the air under solar lights, 
there is developed a series of changing forms, in clouds, 
plants, and animals, all of which have reference in their 
action, or nature, to the human intelligence that per- 
ceives them ; and on which, in their aspects of horror or 
beauty, and their qualities of good and evil, there is 
engraved a series of myths, or words of the forming 
power, which, according to the true passion and energy 
of the human race, they have been enabled to read into 
religion. And this forming power has been by all 
nations partly confused with the breath or air through 
which it acts, and partly understood as a creative 
wisdom, proceeding from the supreme Deity ; but enter- 
ing into and inspiring all intelligences that work in 
harmony with Him. And whatever intellectual results 
may be in modern days obtained, by regarding this 
effluence only as a motion of vibration, every forma- 
tive human act hitherto, and the best states of human 
happiness and order, have depended on the apprehension 
of its mystery (which is certain), and of its personality 
(which is probable). — The Queen of the Air, sees. 59-63, 
88-89. 

You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence 
of the spirit which culminates in your own life, shows 
itself in dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins 
to assume any orderly and lovely state. You will find it 
impossible to separate this idea of gradated manifesta- 
tion from that of the vital power. Things are not either 



84 JOHN BUSKIN. 

wholly alive, or wholly dead. They are less or more 
alive. Take the nearest, most easily examined instance 
— the life of a flower. Notice what a different degree 
and kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The 
calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of the flower ; 
the child-blossom is bound up in it, hand and foot; 
guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time of birth. 
The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the 
egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last ; 
but it never lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the 
moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy ; or wither 
gradually, as in the buttercup ; or persist in a ligneous 
apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose ; or 
harmonize itself so as to share in the aspect of the real 
flower, as in the lily ; but it never shares in the corolla's 
bright passion of life. And the gradations which thus 
exist between the different members of organic creat- 
ures, exist no less between the different ranges of 
organism. We know no higher or more energetic life 
than our own ; but there seems to me this great good in 
the idea of gradation of life — it admits the idea of a 
life above us, in other creatures, as much nobler than 
ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust. 



RUSKIN THE CRITIC OF ART. 



** All true Art is praise. . . . Fix theu in your mind as the 
guiding principle of all right practical labor, and source of all health- 
ful life-energy, — that your art is to be the praise of something that 
you love. It may be only the praise of a shell or a stone ; it may be 
the praise of a hero ; it may be the praise of God ; your rank as a 
living creature is determined by the height and breadth of your love ; 
but, be you small or great, what healthy art is possible to you must 
be the expression of your true delight in a real thing, better than the 
art." — The Laws of Fesole. 

PEELUDE. 

These are the words with which Mr. Riiskin introduces 
his book of guidance to the jDractice and principles of Art ; 
well might they serve as motto to all those portions of his 
writings which treat of the beauty of the world as reproduced 
through human power. To him, the soul of art-force is Love 
and Obedience. Elsewhere he defines the artist: "An artist 
is a person who has submitted in his work to a law which it 
was painful to obey, that he may bestow by his work a 
delight which it is gracious to bestow. '' Thus he uplifts 
Technique itself into the sphere of the moral suggestion. To 
this method of spiritual interpretation he has from the first 
consistently adhered. In his earlier books, he formulates an 
testhetic philosophy which rests entirely upon the principles 
of ethics ; in his later, he proclanns a national morality as the 
necessary condition of art. 

By this adoption of an ethical standard, Ruskin perma- 



86 JOHN BUSKIN. 

nently separates himself from a large, perhaps the largest, 
class of art-critics and sesthetic philosophers. The school 
which holds as its watchword, "Art for art's sake," conceives 
the natm-e of the subject and the religious spirit of the artist 
to be matter of indifference. To this school, the " morale " is 
entirely subordinate to brilliance, force, execution; or is at 
best valued only as an emotional stimulus. Men of this school 
inevitably stigmatize Mr. Ruskin's interpretation of art as 
sheer sentimentality. They recognize always reverently the 
great work he has done in detail; but they consider the 
general trend of that work to be vitiated by a false method. 
He appears to them an outsider, — preacher, not critic, at 
heart, — endeavoring to apply to art a principle which has no 
place there. Ruskin, although, as will be seen even from the 
following selections, he does not undervalue technical quali- 
ties, has, indeed, little in common with these gentlemen. In 
compensation, however, there is scarcely any other limit to 
the breadth of his artistic sympathies. His earliest work was 
written to defend modern painters, yet never had the artists of 
the past been interpreted to the English public with so loving an 
enthusiasm. He was himself ascetically religious in instinct, 
yet he has revealed, once and forever, the power of the 
great secular painters of Venice. Devotion to the Gothic as 
opposed to the Classic spirit was the central theme of the work 
of his youth ; but in later life he has pondered with profound 
insight over the thought of Greece, and has made manifest 
to us new depths of meaning in her art and her mythology. 
It would be hard to name a school of worthily accredited art 
which Mr. Ruskin does not love, and which he has not caused 
us to love with a new intelligence. 



THE GEOUNDS OF ART, 87 



THE GEOUNDS OF AET. 

Here let me finally and firmly enunciate tlie great 
principle to which all that has hitherto been stated is 
subservient : — that art is valuable or otherwise, only as it 
expresses the personality, activity, and living perception 
of a good and great human soul ; that it may express 
and contain this with little help from execution, and less 
from science ; and that if it have not this, if it show not 
the vigor, perception, and invention of a mighty human 
spirit, it is worthless. Worthless, I mean, as art; it may 
be precious in some other way, but, as art, it is nugatory. 
Once let this be well understood among us, and magnifi- 
cent consequences Avill soon follow. . . . By work of the 
soul, I mean the reader always to understand the work 
of the entire immortal creature, proceeding from a 
quick, perceptive, and eager heart perfected by the intel- 
lect, and finally dealt with by the hands, under the direct 
guidance of these higher powers. . . . 

Whatever may be the means, or whatever the more 
immediate -end of any kind of art, all of it that is 
good agrees in this, that it is the expression of one soul 
talking to another, and is precious according to the 
greatness of the soul that utters it. And consider what 
mighty consequences follow from our acceptance of this 
truth ! what a key we have herein given us for the 
interpretation of the art of all time ! For, as long as 



88 JOHN BUSKIN. 

we held art to consist in any high manual skill, or 
successful imitation of natural objects, or any scientific 
and legalized manner of performance whatever, it was 
necessary for us to limit our admiration to narrow 
periods and to few men. . . . 

But let us once comprehend the holier nature of the art 
of man, and begin to look for the meaning of the spirit, 
however syllabled, and the scene is changed; and we 
are changed also. Those small and dexterous creatures 
whom we once worshipped, those fur-capped divinities 
with sceptres of camel's hair, peering and poring in 
their one-windowed chambers over the minute precious- 
ness of the labored canvas ; how are they swept away 
and crushed into unnoticeable darkness ! And in their 
stead, as the walls of the dismal rooms that enclosed 
them and us are struck by the four winds of Heaven, 
and rent away, and as the world opens to our sight, lo ! 
far back into all the depths of time, and forth from all 
the fields that have been sown with human life, how 
the harvest of the dragon's teeth is springing ! how the 
companies of the gods are ascending out of the earth ! 
The dark stones that have so long been the sepulchres 
of the thoughts of nations, and the forgotten ruins 
wherein their faith lay charnelled, give up the dead 
that were in them ; and beneath the Egyptian ranks of 
sultry and silent rock, and amidst the dim golden lights 
of the Byzantine dome, and out of the confused and 
cold shadows of the Northern cloister, behold, the 
multitudinous souls come forth with singing, gazing on 
us with the soft eyes of newly comprehended sympathy. 



THE GROUNDS OF ART. 89 

and stretching their white arms to us across the grave, 
in the solemn gladness of everlasting brotherhood. — 
Stones of Venice, vol. iii.; chap. iv. 

Wherever art is practised for its own sake, and the 
delight of the workman is in what he does and j^^^oduces, 
instead of in what he interprets or exhibits, — there art 
has an influence of the most fatal kind on brain and heart, 
and it issues, if long so pursued, in the destruction both 
of intellectual power and moral principle ; whereas art, 
devoted humbly and self-forgetfully to the clear state- 
ment and record of the facts of the universe, is always 
helpful and beneficent to mankind, full of comfort, 
strength, and salvation. 

Now, when you were once well assured of this, you 
might logically infer another thing; namely, that when 
Art was occupied in the function in which she was 
serviceable, she would herself be strengthened by the 
service ; and when she was doing what Providence with- 
out doubt intended her to do, she would gain in vitality 
and dignity just as she advanced in usefulness. On the 
other hand, you might gather that when her agency was 
distorted to the deception or degradation of mankind, she 
would herself be equally misled and degraded — that she 
would be checked in advance, or precipitated in decline. 

And this is the truth also ; and holding this clew, you 
will easily and justly interpret the phenomena of his- 
tory. So long as Art is steady in the contemplation 
and exhibition of natural facts, so long she herself 
lives and grows ; and in her own life and growth partly 



90 JOHN BUSKIN. 

implies, partly secures, that of the nation in the midst 
of which she is practised. But a time has always 
hitherto come, in which, having thus reached a singular 
perfection, she begins to contemplate that perfection, 
and to imitate it, and deduce rules and forms from it; 
and thus to forget her duty and ministry as the inter- 
preter and discoverer of Truth. And in the very 
instant when this diversion of her purpose and forget- 
fulness of her function take place — f orgetfulness gener- 
ally coincident with her apparent perfection — in that 
instant, I say, begins her actual catastrophe ; and by 
her own fall — so far as she has influence — she 
accelerates the ruin of the nation by which she is 
practised. . . . 

But I will ask your patience with me while I try to 
illustrate, in some farther particulars, the dependence of 
the healthy state and power of art itself upon the exer- 
cise of its appointed function in the interpretation of 
fact. 

You observe that I always say interjjretation, never 
imitation. My reason for doing so is, first, that good 
art rarely imitates ; it usually only describes or ex- 
plains. But my second and chief reason is that good 
art always consists of two things. First, the observa- 
tion of fact ; secondly, the manifesting of human design 
and authority in the way the fact is told. Great and 
good art must unite the two; it cannot exist for a 
moment but in their unity ; it consists of the two as 
essentially as water consists of oxygen and hydrogen, or 
marble of lime and carbonic acid. 



THE GROUNDS OF ART. 91 

Let us inquire a little into the nature of each of the 
elements. The first element, we say, is the love of 
Nature, leading to the effort to observe and report her 
truly. And this is the first and leading element. 
Eeview for yourselves the history of art, and you will 
find this to be a manifest certainty, that no great school 
ever yet existed which had not for priTnal aim the repre- 
sentation of some natural fact as truly as possible. . . . 

Wheresoever the search after truth begins, there life 
begins ; wheresoever that search ceases, there life 
ceases. As long as a school of art holds any chain of 
natural facts, trying to discover more of them and 
express them better daily, it may play hither and 
thither as it likes on this side of the chain or that ; it 
may design grotesques and conventionalisms, build the 
simplest buildings, serve the most practical utilities, 
yet all it does will be gloriously designed and gloriously 
done ; but let it once quit hold of the chain of natural 
fact, cease to pursue that as the clew to its work ; let it 
propose to itself any other end than preaching this 
living word, and think first of showing its own skill or 
its own fancy, and from that hour its fall is precipitate 
— its destruction sure ; nothing that it does or designs 
will ever have life or loveliness in it more ; its hour has 
come, a,nd there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, 
nor wisdom in the grave whither it goeth. — The Two 
Paths, sees. 17-23. 



92 JOHN BUSKIN. 



THE IMAGINATION. 

ASSOCIATIVE. 

We find that the imagination has three totally dis- 
tinct functions. It combines, and by combination 
creates new forms ; but the secret principle of this 
combination has not been shown by the analysts. 
Again, it treats or regards both the simple images and 
its own combinations in peculiar ways ; and, thirdly, it 
penetrates, analyzes, and reaches truths by no other 
faculty discoverable. . . . 

It has been said that in composition the mind can 
only take cognizance of likeness or dissimilarity, or of 
abstract beauty, among the ideas it brings together. But 
neither likeness nor dissimilarity secures harmony. We 
saw in the chapter on Unity that likeness destroyed 
harmony or unity of membership ; and that difference 
did not necessarily secure it, but only that particular 
impe7]fection in each of the harmonizing parts which 
can only be supplied by its fellow part. If, therefore, 
the combination made is to be harmonious, the artist 
must induce in each of its component parts (suppose 
two only, for simplicity's sake) such imperfection as 
that the other shall put it right. If one of them be 
perfect by itself, the other will be an excrescence. Both 
must be faulty when separate, and each corrected by 



THE IMAGINATION. 93 

the presence of the other. If he can accomplish this, 
the result will be beautiful; it will be a whole, an 
organized body with dependent members ; — he is an 
inventor. If not, let his separate features be as beauti- 
ful, as apposite, or as resemblant as they may, they 
form no whole. They are two members glued together. 
He is only a carpenter and joiner. 

Now, the conceivable imperfections of any single 
feature are infinite. It is impossible, therefore, to fix 
upon a form of imperfection in the one, and try with 
this all the forms of imperfection of the other until one 
fits; but the two imperfections must be co-relatively 
and simultaneously conceived. 

This is imagination, properly so called, im.agination 
associative, the grandest mechanical power that the 
human intelligence possesses, and one which will appear 
more and more marvellous the longer we consider it. 
By its operation, two ideas are chosen out of an infinite 
mass (for it evidently matters not whether the imper- 
fections be conceived out of the infinite number con- 
ceivable, or selected out of a number recollected), two 
ideas which are separately ivrong^ which together shall 
be right, and of whose unity, therefore, the idea must 
be formed at the instant they are seized, as it is only in 
tha.t unity that either are good, and therefore only the 
conception of that unity can prompt the preference. 
Now, what is that prophetic action of mind, which, out 
of an infinite mass of things that cannot be tried 
together, seizes, at the same instant, two that are fit 
for each other, together right ; yet each disagreeable 
alone ? . . . 



94 JOHN BUSKIN. 

This operation would be wonderful enough, if it were 
concerned with two ideas only. But a powerfully 
imaginative mind seizes and combines at the same 
instant, not only two, but all the important ideas of its 
poem or picture ; and while it works with any one of 
them, it is at the same instant working with and modi- 
fying all in their relations to it, never losing sight of 
their bearings on each other ; as the motion of a snake's 
body goes through all parts at once, and its volition acts 
at the same instant in coils that go contrar}^ ways. 

This faculty is indeed something that looks as if man 
were made after the image of God. It is inconceivable, 
admirable, altogether divine ; and yet wonderful as it 
may seem, it is palpably evident that no less an opera- 
tion is necessary for the production of any great work : 
for, by the definition of Unity of Membership (the 
essential characteristic of greatness), not only certain 
couples or groups of parts, but all the parts of a noble 
work must be separately imperfect ; each must imply 
and ask for all the rest, and the glory of every one of 
them must consist in its relation to the rest; neither 
while so much as one is wanting can any be right. . . . 

The final tests, therefore, of the work of associative 
imagination are, its intense simplicity, its perfect har- 
mony, and its absolute truth. It may be a harmony, 
majestic or humble, abrupt or prolonged, but it is 
always a governed and perfect whole ; evidencing in all 
its relations the weight, prevalence, and universal 
dominion of an awful, inexplicable Power ; a chastising, 
animating, and disposing Mind. 



THE IMAGINATION. 95 



PENETRATIVE. 



Thus far we have been defining that combining opera- 
tion of the Imagination, which appears to be in a sort 
mechanical, yet takes place in the same inexplicable 
modes, whatever be the order of conception submitted to 
it, though I chose to illustrate it by its dealings with 
mere matter before taking cognizance of any nobler 
subjects of imagery. We must now examine the deal- 
ing of the Imagination with its separate conceptions, 
and endeavor to understand not only its principles of 
selection, but its modes of apprehension with respect to 
what it selects. 

Such is always the mode in which the highest imagi- 
native faculty seizes its materials. It never stops at 
crusts or ashes, or outward images of any kind; it 
ploughs them all aside, and plunges into the very cen- 
tral fiery heart ; nothing else will content its spiritual- 
ity ; whatever semblances and various outward shows 
and phases its subject may possess, go for nothing; it 
gets within all fence, cuts down to the root, and drinks 
the very vital sap of that it deals with : once therein it 
is at liberty to throw up what new shoots it will, so 
always that the true juice and sap be in them, and to 
prune and twist them at its pleasure, and bring them 
to fairer fruit than grew on the old tree ; but all this 
pruning and twisting is Avork that it likes not, and often 
does ill ; its function and gift are the getting at the 
root, its nature and dignity depend on its holding things 
always by the heart. Take its hand from off the beat- 



96 JOHN nvsKin. 

ing of tliat, and it will prophesy no longer ; it looks not 
in the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it describes not 
by outward features ; all that it affirms, judges, or 
describes, it affirms from within. 

It may seem to the reader that I am incorrect in 
calling this penetrating, possession-taking faculty. 
Imagination. Be it so, the name is of little conse- 
quence ; the faculty itself, called by what name we 
will, I insist upon as the highest intellectual power of 
man. There is no reasoning in it, it works not by 
algebra, nor by integral calculus, it is a piercing, pholas- 
like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very 
rock heart ; no matter what be the subject submitted to 
it, substance, or spirit ; all is alike divided asunder, 
joint and marrow, whatever utmost truth, life, princi- 
ple it has, laid bare ; and that which has no truth, life, 
nor principle, dissipated into its original smoke at a 
touch. The whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible 
angels. Vials that have lain sealed in the deep sea a 
thousand years it unseals, and brings out of them Genii. 

Every great conception of poet or painter is held and 
treated by this faculty. Every character that is so 
much as touched by men like ^schylus, Homer, Dante, 
or Shakespeare, is by them held by the heart ; and every 
circumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, or 
seeming, is seized by process from within, and is re- 
ferred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is 
never lost for an instant ; so that every sentence, as it 
has been thought out from the heart, opens for us a way 
down to the heart, leads us to the centre, and then 



THE IMAGtNATtOn. 97 

leaves us to gather what more we may. It is the Open 
Sesame of a huge, obscure, endless cave, with inexhaust- 
ible treasure of pure gold scattered in it ; the wandering 
about and gathering the pieces may be left to any of 
us, all can accomplish that; but the first opening of 
that invisible door in the rock is of the imagination only. 

Hence there is in every word set down by the imagi- 
native mind an awful under-current of meaning, and 
evidence and shadow upon it of the deep places out of 
which it has come. It is often obscure, often half told, 
for he who wrote it, in his clear seeing of the things 
beneath, may have been impatient of detailed interpre- 
tation ; but if we choose to dwell upon it and trace it, 
it will lead us always securely back to that metropolis 
of the soul's dominion from which we may follow out 
all the ways and tracks to its farthest coasts. 

I think the " Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante '^ 
of Francesca di Rimini, and the *' He has no children " 
of Macduff are as fine instances as can be given ; but 
the sign and mark of it are visible on every line of the 
four great men above instanced. 

ISTow, in all these instances, let it be observed — for it 
is to that end alone that I have been arguing all along 
— that the virtue of the Imagination is its reaching, by 
intuition and intensity of gaze (not by reasoning, but 
by its authoritative opening and revealing power), a 
more essential truth than is seen at the surface of 
things. I repeat that it matters not whether the reader 
is willing to call this faculty Imagination or not ; I do 
not care about the name ; but I would be understood 



98 JOHN itusKin. 

when I speak of imagination hereafter, to mean this 
the base of whose authority and being is its perpetual 
thirst for truth and purpose to be true. It has no food, 
no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth ; it is 
forever looking under masks, and burning up mists ; no 
fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it ; 
the first condition of its existence is incapability of 
being deceived ; and though it sometimes dwells upon 
and substantiates the fictions of fancy, yet its own 
operation is to trace to their farthest limit the true laws 
and likelihoods even of the fictitious creation. . . . 

Finally, it is evident that, like the theoretic faculty, 
the imagination must be fed constantly by external 
nature — after the illustrations we have given, this may 
seem mere truism, for it is clear that to the exercise of 
the penetrative faculty a subject of penetration is neces- 
sary ; but I note it because many painters of powerful 
mind have been lost to the world by their suffering the 
restless writhing of their imagination in its cage to 
take place of its healthy and exulting activity in the 
fields of nature. The most imaginative men always 
study the hardest, and are the most thirsty for new 
knowledge. Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular 
prison, and is happy ; but Imagination is a pilgrim on 
the earth — and her home is in heaven. Shut her from 
the fields of the celestial mountains — bar her from 
breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air ; and we may as 
well turn upon her the last bolt of the Tower of Famine, 
and give the keys to the keeping of the wildest surge 
that washes Capraja and Gorgona. 



THE IMAGINATION. 99 



CONTEMPLATIVE. 

We have, in the two preceding chapters, arrived at 
definite conclusions respecting the power and essence of 
the imaginative faculty. In these two acts of penetra- 
tion and combination, its separating and characteristic 
attributes are entirely developed; it remains for us 
only to observe a certain habit or mode of operation in 
which it frequently delights, and by which it addresses 
itself to our perceptions more forcibly, and asserts its 
presence more distinctly, than in those mighty but more 
secret workings wherein its life consists. 

In our examination of the combining imagination, we 
chose to assume the first or simple conception to be as 
clear in the absence as in the presence of the object of 
It. This, I suppose, is, in point of fact, never the case, 
nor is an approximation to such distinctness of concep- 
tion always a characteristic of the imaginative mind. 
Many persons have thorough 3,nd felicitous power of 
drawing from memory, yet never originate a thought 
nor excite an emotion. . . . 

But on this indistinctness of conception, itself com- 
paratively valueless and unaffecting, is based the opera- 
tion of the imaginative faculty with which we are at 
present concerned, and in which its glory is consum- 
mated ; whereby, depriving the subject of material and 
bodily shape, and regarding such of its qualities only as 
it chooses for particular purpose, it forges these quali- 
ties together in such groups and forms as it desires, 
and gives to their abstract being consistency and 



100 JOHN ItUSKin. 

reality, by striking them as it were with, the die of an 
image belonging to other matter, which stroke having 
once received, they pass current at once in the peculiar 
conjunction and for the peculiar value desired. 

Thus, in the description of Satan quoted in the first 
chapter, "And like a comet burned," the bodily shape 
of the angel is destroyed, the inflaming of the formless 
spirit is alone regarded ; and this, and his power of evil 
associated in one fearful and abstract conception, are 
stamped to give them distinctness and permanence with 
the image of the comet, "that fires the length of 
Ophiuchus huge." Yet this could not be done, but that 
the image of the comet itself is in a measure indistinct, 
capable of awful expansion, and full of threatening 
and fear. Again, in his fall, the imagination gathers 
up the thunder, the resistance, the massy prostration, 
separates them from the external form, and binds them 
together by the help of that image of the mountain half- 
sunk ; which again would be unfit but for its own in- 
distinctness, and for that glorious addition " with all his 
pines," whereby a vitality and spear-like hostility are 
communicated to its falling form ; and the fall is 
marked as not utter subversion, but sinking only, the 
pines remaining in their uprightness and unity, and 
threatening of darkness upon the descended precipice ; 
and again in that yet more noble passage at the close of 
the fourth book, where almost every operation of the 
contemplative imagination is concentrated ; the angelic 
squadron first gathered into one burning mass by the 
single expression " sharpening in mooned horns," then 



THE IMAGINATION. lOl 

told out in their unity and multitude and stooped hos- 
tility, by the image of the wind upon the corn ; Satan 
endowed with godlike strength and fn durance in that 
mighty line, " like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved," with 
infinitude of size the next instant, and with all the 
vagueness and terribleness of spiritual power, by the 
'' horror plumed,'^ and the " ivhat seemed both spear 
and shield." ... 

We have now, I think, reviewed the various modes in 
which Imagination contemplative may be exhibited in 
art, and arrived at all necessary certainties respecting 
the essence of the faculty ; which we have found in all 
its three functions. Associative of Truth, Penetrative of 
Truth, and Contemplative of Truth ; and having no 
dealings nor relations with any kind of falsity. — 
Modern Paintei^s, vol. ii. part iii. chaps, i.-iv. 

THE TEMPER OF THE ARTIST. 

Every great composition is in perfect harmony with all 
true rules, and involves thousands too delicate for ear, 
or eye, or thought to trace ; still it is possible to reason, 
with infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles 
when the thing is once done ; only, all our reasoning 
will not enable any one to do another thing like it, 
because all reasoning falls infinitely short of the divine 
instinct. Thus we may reason wisely over the way a 
bee builds its comb, and be profited by finding out cer- 
tain things about the angles of it. But the bee knows 
nothing about those matters. It builds its comb in a far 
more inevitable way. And, from a bee to Paul Veronese, 



102 JOHN BUSKIN. 

all master-workers work with this awful, this inspired 
unconsciousness. . . . 

Such, then, being the generally passive or instinctive 
character of right invention, it may be asked how these 
unmanageable instincts are to be rendered practically 
serviceable in historical or poetical painting, — espe- 
cially historical, in which given facts are to be repre- 
sented. Simply by the sense and self-control of the 
whole man ; not by control of the particular fancy or 
vision. He who habituates himself, in his daily life, to 
seek for the stern facts in whatever he hears or sees, 
will have these facts again brought before him by the 
involuntary imaginative power in their noblest associa- 
tions ; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, 
will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him 
in his dreams. . . . 

So, in the higher or expressive part of the work, the 
whole virtue of it depends on his being able to quit his 
own personality, and enter successively into the hearts 
and thoughts of each person ; and in all this he is still 
passive : in gathering the truth he is passive, not deter- 
mining what the truth to be gathered shall be, and in 
the after vision he is passive, not determining, but as 
his dreams w411 have it, what the truth to be represented 
shall be ; only according to his own nobleness is his power 
of entering into the hearts of noble persons, and the 
general character of his dream of them. 

It follows from all this, evidently, that a great 
idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power 
depends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own 



THE IMAGINATION. 103 

existence, and becoming a mere witness and mirror of 
truth, and a scribe of visions, — always passive in sight, 
passive in utterance, — lamenting continually that he can- 
not completely reflect nor clearly utter all he has seen. 
Not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But 
the man who has no invention is always setting things 
in order, and putting the world to rights, and mending, 
and beautifying, and pluming himself on his doings as 
supreme in all ways. — Vol, iii. part iv. chap. vii. 

You must have the right moral state first, or you can- 
not have the art. But when the art is once obtained, 
its reflected action enhances and completes the moral 
state out of which it arose, and, above all, communi- 
cates the exaltation to other minds which are already 
morally capable of the like. 

For instance, take the art of singing, and the simplest 
perfect master of it (up to the limits of his nature) whom 
you can find — a skylark. From him you may learn what 
it is to ' sing for joy.' You must get the moral state 
first, the pure gladness, then give it finished expression ; 
and it is perfected in itself, and made communicable to 
other creatures capable of such joy. But it is incom- 
municable to those who are not prepared to receive it. 

Now, all right human song is, similarly, the finished 
expression, by art, of the joy or grief of noble persons, 
for right causes. And accurately in proportion to the 
Tightness of the cause, and purity of the emotion, is the 
possibility of the fine art. A maiden may sing of her 
lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost money. 



104 JOHN BUSKIN. 

And with absolute precision from highest to lowest, the 
fineness of the possible art is an index of the moral 
purity and majesty of the emotion it expresses. You 
may test it practically at any instant. Question with 
yourself concerning any feeling that has taken strong 
possession of your mind, " Could this be sung by a 
master, and sung nobly, with a true melody and art ? " 
Then it is a right feeling. Could it not be sung at all, 
or only sung ludicrously ? It is a base one. And that 
is so in all the arts ; so that with mathematical precis- 
ion, subject to no error or exception, the art of a nation, 
so far as it exists, is an exponent of its ethical state. 

An exponent, observe, and exalting influence ; but not 
the root or cause. You cannot paint or sing yourselves 
into being good men ; you must be good men before 
you can either paint or sing, and then the colour and 
sound will complete in you all that is best. ... As 
soon as we begin our real work, and you have learned 
what it is to draw a true line, I shall be able to make 
manifest to you — and indisputably so — that the day's 
work of a man like Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists 
of an unfaltering, uninterrupted succession of move- 
ments of the hand more precise than those of the finest 
fencer ; the pencil leaving one point and arriving at 
another, not only with unerring precision at the extrem- 
ity of the line, but with an unerring and yet varied 
course — sometimes over spaces a foot or more in extent 
— yet a course so determined everywhere that either of 
these men could, and Veronese often does, draw a 
finished profile, or any other portion of the contour of a 



THE IMAGINATION. 105 

face, with one line, not afterwards changed. Try, first, 
to realize to yourselves the muscular precision of that 
action^ and the intellectual strain of it ; for the move- 
ment of a fencer is perfect in practised monotony ; but 
the movement of the hand of a great painter is at every 
instant governed by direct and new intention. Then 
imagine that muscular firmness and subtlety, and the 
instantaneously selective and ordinant energy of the 
brain, sustained all day long, not only without fatigue, 
but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which 
an eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings ; and 
this all life long, and through long life, not only with- 
out failure of power, but with visible increase of it, 
until the actually organic changes of old age. And then 
consider, so far as you know anything of physiology, 
what sort of an ethical state of body and mind that 
means ! — ethic through ages past ! what fineness of 
race there must be to get it, what exquisite balance and 
symmetry of the vital powers ! And then, finally, 
determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that 
is consistent with any viciousness of soul, with any 
mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, any wretchedness oi 
spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion against 
law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious, 
violation of even the least law to which obedience is 
essential for the glory of life, and the pleasing of its 
Giver. — Lectures on Art, sees. 66, 67, 68. 

But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the 
result of the moral character of generations. A bad 



106 JOHN BUSKIN. 

woman may have a sweet voice ; but that sweetness of 
voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she 
can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of 
laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, 
every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, 
face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and harmony of 
invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human 
conduct, renders, after a certain number of generations, 
human art possible ; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little 
a one ; and persistent vicious living and following of 
pleasure render, after a certain number of generations, all 
art impossible. Men are deceived by the long-suffering of 
the laws of nature ; and mistake, in a nation, the reward 
of the virtue of its sires for the issue of its own sins. 
The time of their visitation will come, and that inevi- 
tably ; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have 
eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. 
And for the individual, as soon as you have learned to 
read, you may, as I said, know him to the heart's core, 
through his art. Let his art-gift be never so great, and 
cultivated to the height by the schools of a great race of 
men ; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own 
being and inner soul ; and the bearing of it will show, 
infallibly, whether it hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. 
If you are dim-eyed, you may not see the difference in 
the fall of the folds at first, but learn how to look, and 
the folds themselves will become transparent, and you 
shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine 
one, making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as 
a winding-sheet. — The Queen of the Air, sec. 107. 



THE IMAGINATION. 107 



, THREE SCHOOLS OF ART. 

Artists, considered as searchers after truth, are to be 
divided into three great classes, a right, a left, and a centre. 
Those on the right perceive and pursue the good, and 
leave the evil ; those in the centre, the greatest, per- 
ceive and pursue the good and evil together, the whole 
thing as it verily is : those on the left perceive and 
pursue the evil, and leave the good. 

The first class, I say, take the good and leave the evil. 
Out of whatever is presented to them, they gather what 
it has of grace, and life, and light, and holiness, and 
leave all, or at least as much as possible, of the rest un- 
drawn. The faces of their figures express no evil pas- 
sions ; the skies of their landscapes are without storm ; 
the prevalent character of their colour is brightness, and 
of their chiaroscuro fulness of light. The early Italian 
and Flemish painters, Angelico and Hemling, Perugino, 
Francia, Eaffaelle in his best time, John Bellini, and 
our own Stothard, belong eminently to this class. 

The second, or greatest class, render all that they see 
in nature unhesitatingly, with a kind of divine grasp 
and government of the whole, sympathizing with all the 
good, and yet confessing, permitting, and bringing good 
out of the evil also. Their subject is infinite as nature, 
their colour equally balanced between splendor and sad- 
ness, reaching occasionally the highest degrees of both, 
and their chiaroscuro equally balanced between light 
and shade. 

The principal men of this class are Michael Angelo, 



108 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Leonardo, Giotto, Tintoret, and Turner. Raffaelle in his 
second time, Titian and Rubens are transitional; the 
first inclining to the eclectic, and the last two to the 
impure class, Eaffaelle rarely giving all the evil, Titian 
and Rubens rarely all the good. 

The last class i^erceive and imitate evil only. They 
cannot draw the trunk of a tree without blasting and 
shattering it, nor a sky except covered with stormy 
clouds ; they delight in the beggary and brutality of 
the human race ; their colour is for the most part sub- 
dued or lurid, and the greatest part of their pictures are 
occupied by darkness. 

Happily the examples of this class are seldom seen in 
perfection. Salvator Rosa and Caravaggio are the most 
characteristic : the other men belonging to it approach 
towards the central rank by imperceptible gradations, as 
they perceive and represent more and more of good. 
But Murillo, Zurbaran, Camillo Procaccini, Rembrandt, 
and Teniers all belong naturally to this lower class. . . . 

Let us, then, endeavor briefly to mark the real rela- 
tions of these three vast ranks of men, whom I shall 
call for convenience in speaking of them. Purists, 
Naturalists, and Sensualists. . . . The passions of 
which the end is the continuance of the race ; the 
indignation which is to arm it against injustice, or 
strengthen it to resist wanton injury, and the fear which 
lies at the root of prudence, reverence, and awe, are all 
honorable and beautiful, so long as man is regarded in 
his relation to the existing world. The religious Purist, 
striving to conceive him withdrawn from those relations, 



THE IMAGINATION. 109 

effaces from the countenance the traces of all transi- 
tory passion, illumines it with holy hope and love, and 
seals it with the serenity of heavenly peace ; he con- 
ceals the forms of the body by the deep-folded garment, 
or else represents them under severely chastened types, 
and would rather paint them emaciated by the fast, or 
pale from the torture, than strengthened by exertion, or 
flushed by emotion. But the great Naturalist takes the 
human being in its wholeness, in its mortal as well as 
its spiritual strength. Capable of sounding and sympa- 
thizing with the whole range of its passions, he brings 
one majestic harmony out of them all ; he represents it 
fearlessly in all its acts and thoughts, in its haste, its 
anger, its sensuality, and its pride, as well as in its 
fortitude or faith, but makes it noble in them all ; he 
casts aside the veil from the body, and beholds the 
mysteries of its form like an angel looking down on an 
inferior creature : there is nothing that he is reluctant 
to behold, nothing that he is ashamed to confess ; with 
all that lives, triumphing, falling, or suffering, he claims 
kindred, either in majesty or in mercy, yet standing, in 
a sort, afar off, unmoved even in the deepness of his 
sympathy, for the spirit within him is too thoughtful to 
be grieved, too brave to be appalled, and too pure to be 
polluted. — Stones of Venice, vol. ii. chap. vi. 

Purist Idealism results from the unwillingness of 
men whose dispositions are more than ordinarily tender 
and holy, to contemplate the various forms of definite 
evil which necessarily occur in the daily aspects of the 



110 JOHN BUSKIN. 

world around them. They shrink from them as from 
pollution, and endeavor to create for themselves an 
imaginary state, in which pain and imperfection do not 
exist or exist in some edgeless and enfeebled condition. 

As, however, pain and imperfection are, by eternal 
laws, bound up with existence, so far as it is visible to 
us, the endeavor to cast them away invariably indicates 
a comparative childishness of mind, and produces a 
childish form of art. In general, the effort is most 
successful when it is most naive, and when the ignorance 
of the draughtsman is in some frank proportion to his 
innocence. For instance, one of the modes of treat- 
ment, the most conducive to this ideal expression, is 
simply drawing everything without shadows, as if the 
sun were everywhere at once. This, in the present 
state of our knowledge, we could not do with grace, 
because we could not do it without fear or shame. But 
an artist of the thirteenth century did it with no 
disturbance of conscience, — knowing no better, or 
rather, in some sense we might say, knowing no worse. 
It is, however, evident, at first thought, that all repre- 
sentations of nature without evil must either be ideals 
of a future world, or be false ideals, if they are under- 
stood to be representations of facts. They can only be 
classed among the branches of the true ideal, in so far 
as they are understood to be nothing more than expres- 
sions of the painter's personal affections or hopes. 

Let us take one or two instances in order clearly to 
explain our meaning. 

The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in the 



THE IMAGINATION. Ill 

endeavor to imagine the beings belonging to another 
world. By purity of life, habitual elevation of thought, 
and natural sweetness of disposition, he was enabled to 
express the sacred affections upon the human counte- 
nance as no one ev^er did before or since. In order to 
effect clearer distinction between heavenly beings and 
those of this world, he represents the former as clothed 
in draperies of the purest colour, crowned with glories 
of burnished gold, and entirely shadowless. With 
exquisite choice of gesture, and disposition of folds of 
drapery, this mode of treatment gives, perhaps, the 
best idea of spiritual beings which the human mind is 
capable of forming. It is, therefore, a true ideal ; but 
the mode in which it is arrived at (being so far mechan- 
ical and contradictory of the appearances of nature) 
necessarily precludes those who practise it from being 
complete masters of their art. It is always childish, 
but beautiful in its childishness. . . . 

It is finally to be remembered, therefore, that Purism 
is always noble when it is instinctive. It is not the 
greatest thing that can be done, but it is x^i'obably the 
greatest thing that the man who does it can do, pro- 
vided it comes from his heart. True, it is a sign of 
weakness, but it is not in our choice whether we will be 
weak or strong ; and there is a certain strength w^hich 
can only be made perfect in Aveakness. If he is work- 
ing in humility, fear of evil, desire of beauty, and sin- 
cere jjurity of purpose and thought, he will produce 
good and helpful things ; but he must be much on his 
guard against supposing himself to be greater than his 



112 JOHN BUSKIN. 

fellows, because he has shut himself into this calm 
and cloistered sphere. His only safety lies in knowing 
himself to be, on the contrary, less than his fellows, and 
in always striving, so far as he can find it in his heart, 
to extend his delicate narrowness towards the great 
naturalist ideal. — Modern Painters, vol. iii. part iv. 
chap. vi. 

We now enter on the consideration of that central 
and highest branch of ideal art which concerns itself 
simply with things as they are, and accepts, in all of 
them, alike the evil and the good. The question is, 
therefore, how the art which represents things simply 
as they are, can be called ideal at all. How does it 
meet that requirement stated in chap. iii. sec. iv. as 
imperative on all great art, that it shall be inventive, 
and a product of the imagination ? It meets it pre- 
eminently by that power of arrangement which I have 
endeavored, at great length, and with great pains, to 
define accurately in the chapter on Imagination associa- 
tive in the second volume. That is to say, accepting 
the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things 
that it sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they 
form a noble whole, in which the imperfection of each 
several part is not only harmless, but absolutely essen- 
tial, and yet in which whatever is good in each several 
part shall be completely displayed. 

This operation of true idealism holds, from the least 
things to the greatest. For instance, in the arrange- 
ment of the smallest masses of colour, the false idealist, 



THE IMAGINATION. 113 

or even tlie purist, depends upon perfecting each sepa- 
rate hue, and raises them all, as far as he can, into 
costly brilliancy ; but the naturalist takes the coarsest 
and feeblest colours of the things around him, and so 
interweaves and opposes them that they become more 
lovely than if they had all been bright. So in the treat- 
ment of the human form, the naturalist will take it as 
he finds it ; but, with such examples as his picture may 
rationally admit of more or less exalted beauty, he will 
associate inferior forms, so as not only to set off those 
whicli are most beautiful, but to bring out clearly what 
good there is in the inferior forms themselves ; finally 
using such measure of absolute evil as there is com- 
monly in nature, both for teaching and for contrast. . . . 

And the greater the master of the ideal, the more 
perfectly true in 2:)ortva[ture will his individual figures 
be always found, the more subtle and bold his arts of 
harmony and contrast. This is a universal principle, 
common to all great art. Consider, in Shakspere, how 
Prince Henry is opposed to Falstaff, Falstaif to Shallow, 
Titania to Bottom, Cordelia to Eegan, Imogen to Cloten, 
and so on ; while all the meaner idealists disdain the 
naturalism, and are shocked at the contrasts. The fact 
is, a man who can see truth at all, sees it wholly, and 
neither desires nor dares to mutilate it. . . . 

Kow, therefore, observe the main conclusions which 
follow from these two conditions, attached always to 
art of this kind. First, it is to be taken straight from 
nature : it is to be the plain narration of something the 
painter or writer saw. Herein is the chief practical 



114 JOHN BUSKIN. 

difference between the liiglier and lower artists ; a 
difference which I feel more and more every day that I 
give to the study of art. All the great men see what 
they paint before they paint it — see it in a perfectly 
passive manner, — cannot help seeing it if they would ; 
whether in their mind's eye, or in bodily fact, does 
not matter ; very often the mental vision is, I believe, 
in men of imagination, clearer than the bodily one ; but 
vision it is, of one kind or another, — the whole scene, 
character, or incident, passing before them as in second 
sight, whether they will or no, and requiring them to 
paint it as they see it ; they not daring, under the might 
of its presence, to alter one jot or tittle of it as they 
write it down or paint it down ; it being to them in its 
own kind and degree always a true vision or Apocalypse, 
and invariably accompanied in their hearts by a feeling 
correspondent to the words, — " Write the things ivhich 
thou hast see7i 
part iv. chap. vii. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDSCAPE ART. 115 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDSCAPE AKT. 

You are all of you well aware that landscape seems 
hardly to have exercised any strong influence, as such, 
on any pagan nation, or pagan artist. I have no time to 
enter into any details on this, of course, most intricate 
and difficult subject ; but I will only ask you to observe, 
that wherever natural scenery is alluded to by the 
ancients, it is either agriculturally, with the kind of 
feeling that a good Scotch farmer has ; sensually, in the 
enjoyment of sun or shade, cool winds or sweet scents ; 
fearfully, in a mere vulgar dread of rocks and desolate 
places, as compared with the comfort of cities ; or, 
finally, superstitiously, in the personification or deifica- 
tion of natural powers. . . . 

You will find, on the other hand, that the language of 
the Bible is specifically distinguished from all other 
early literature, by its delight in natural imagery ; and 
that the dealings of God with His people are calculated 
peculiarly to awaken this sensibility within them. . . . 
Finally, Christ himself, setting the concluding example 
to the conduct and thoughts of men, spends nearly his 
whole life in the fields, the mountains, or the small 
country villages of Judea. ... It would thus naturally 
follow, both from the general tone and teaching of the 
scriptures, and from the example of our Lord himself, 
that wherever Christianity was preached and accepted, 



116 JOHN BUSKIN. 

there would be an immediate interest awakened in the 
works of God, as seen in the natural world ; and, 
accordingly, this is the second universal and distinctive 
character of Christian art, as distinguished from all 
pagan work, the first being a peculiar spirituality in its 
conception of the human form, preferring holiness of 
expression and strength of character to beauty of 
features or of body, and the second, as I say, its intense 
fondness for natural objects, — animals, leaves, and 
flowers, — inducing an immediate transformation of the 
cold and lifeless pagan ornamentation into vivid imagery 
of nature. Of course this manifestation of feeling was 
at first checked by the circumstances under which the 
Christian religion was disseminated. The art of the 
first three centuries is entirely subordinate. . . . The 
warfare in which Europe was perpetually plunged re- 
tarded this development for ages ; but it steadily and 
gradually prevailed, working from the eighth to the 
eleventh century like a seed in the ground, showing 
little signs of life, but still, if carefully examined, 
changing essentially every day and every hour : at last, 
in the twelfth century, the blade appears above the 
black earth; in the thirteenth, the plant is in full 
leaf. . . . 

The art of the thirteenth century is the foundation of 
all art, — nor merely the foundation, but the root of it ; 
that is to say, succeeding art is not merely built upon 
it, but was all comprehended in it, and is developed out 
of it. Passing this great century, we find three success- 
ive branches developed from it, in each of the three 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDSCAPE ART. 117 

following centuries. The fourteenth century is pre- 
eminently the age of Thought, the fifteenth the age of 
Draiving, and the sixteenth the age of Fainting. . . . 

This, then, being the state of things respecting art in 
general, let us next trace the career of landscape 
through these centuries. 

It was only towards the close of the thirteenth cent- 
ury that figure painting began to assume so perfect a 
condition as to require some elaborate suggestion of 
landscape background. Up to that time, if any natural 
object had to be represented, it was done in an entirely 
conventional way, as you see it upon Greek vases, or in 
a Chinese porcelain pattern. . . . But at the close of 
the thiiteenth century, Giotto, and in the course of the 
fourteenth, Arcogna, sought, for the first time, to give 
some resemblance to nature in their backgrounds, and 
introduced behind their figures pieces of true landscape, 
formal enough still, but complete in intention, having 
foregrounds and distances, sky and water, forests and 
mountains, carefully delineated, not exactly in their 
true colour, but yet in colour approximating to the 
truth. The system which they introduced was observed 
for a long period by their pupils, and may be thus 
briefly described : the sky is always pure blue, paler at 
the horizon, and with a few streaky white clouds in it ; 
the ground is green even to the extreme distance, with 
brown rocks projecting from it; water is blue streaked 
with white. The trees are nearly always composed of 
clusters of their proper leaves, relieved on a black or 
dark ground. . . . You will find that [the conditions of 



118 JOHN liUSKIir. 

noble conventionalism] always consist in sto2:>ping short 
of nature, not in falsifying nature ; and thus in Giotto's 
foliage he stoj^^s short of the quantity of leaves on the 
real tree, but he gives you the form of the leaves repre- 
sented with perfect truth. ... To the landscape of 
Kaphael, Leonardo, and Perugino, the advance consists 
principally in two great steps : the first, that distant 
objects were more or less invested with a blue colour, 

— the second, that trees were no longer painted with a 
black ground, but with a rich dark brown, or deep green. 
From Giotto's old age to the youth of Eaphael the 
advance in and knowledge of landscape consisted of no 
more than these two simple steps ; but the execution of 
landscape became infinitely more perfect and elaborate. 
. . . The first man who entirely broke through the con- 
ventionality of his time, and painted pure landscape, 
was Masaccio, but he died too young to effect the revo- 
lution of which his genius was capable. It was left for 
other men to accomplish, namely, for Correggio and 
Titian. These two painters were the first who relieved 
the foregrounds of their landscape from the grotesque, 
quaint, and crowded formalism of the early painters; 
and gave a close approximation to the forms of nature 
in all things, retaining, however, thus much of the old 
system, that the distances were for the most part 
painted in deep ultramarine blue, the foreground in rich 
green and brown. . . . 

Now you see there remained a fourth step to be taken, 

— the doing away with conventionalism altogether, so 
as to create the perfect art of landscape painting. The 



TUE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDSCAPE ART. 119 

course of the mind of Europe was to do this ; but at the 
very moment when it ouglit to have been done, the art 
of all civilized nations was paralyzed at once by the 
operation of the poisonous elements of infidelity and 
classical learning together, as I have endeavored to 
show elsewhere. In this paralysis, like a soldier shot 
as he is just gaining an eminence, the art of the seven- 
teenth century struggled forward, and sank upon the 
spot it had been endeavoring to attain. The step which 
should have freed landscape from conventionalism Avas 
actually taken b}^ Claude and Salvator Kosa, but taken in 
a state of palsy, — taken so as to lose far more than 
was gained. . . . 

[The Claude and Salvator landscape] was, however, 
received with avidity ; for this main reason, that the 
architecture, domestic life and manners of the period 
were gradually getting more and more artificial and were 
approximating to that horrible and lifeless condition in 
which you find them just before the outbreak of the 
French Revolution. 

Now, observe, exactly as hoops, and starch, and false 
hair, and all that in mind and heart these things typify 
and betray, as these, I say, gained upon men, there was 
a necessary reaction in favor of the natural. Men had 
never lived so utterly in defiance of the laws of nature 
before ; but they could not do this without feeling a 
strange charm in that Avhich they defied ; and, accord- 
ingly, we find this reactionary sentiment expressing 
itself in a base school of what was called 2^^storal 
poetry ; that is to say, poetry written in praise of the 



120 JOHN BUSKIN. 

country, by men who lived in coffee-houses and on the 
Mall. The essence of pastoral poetry is the sense of 
strange delightfulness in grass, which is occasionally 
felt by a man who has seldom set his foot on it ; it is 
essentially the poetry of the cockney, and for the most 
part corresponds in its aim and rank, as compared with 
other literature, to the porcelain shepherds and shep- 
herdesses on a chimney-piece, as compared with great 
works of sculpture. . . . 

It was in such a state of society that the landscape of 
Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Eosa attained its 
reputation. It is the complete expression on canvas 
of the spirit of the time. . . . 

It was, however, altogether impossible that this state 
of things should long continue. The age which had 
buried itself in formalism grew weary at last of the 
restraint, and the approach of a new era was marked 
by the appearance, and the enthusiastic reception, of 
writers who took true delight in those wild scenes of 
nature which had so long been despised. . . . 

Together with Scott appeared the group of poets, — 
Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and, finally, Tenny- 
son, — differing widely in moral principles and spiritual 
temper, but all agreeing, more or less, in this love for 
natural scenery. . . . 

In order to meet this new feeling for nature, there 
necessarily arose a new school of landscape painting. . . . 

Turner was the first man who ^^I'esented us with the 
type of perfect landscape art. . . . 

I did not come here to tell you of my beliefs or my 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDSCAPE ART. 121 

conjectures : I came to tell you the truth which I 
have giveu fifteen years of my life to ascertain, that 
this man, this Turner, of whom you have known so 
little while he was living among you, will one clay 
take his place beside Shakspeare and Verulam, in the 
annals of the light of England. 

By Shakspeare, humanity was unsealed to you ; by 
Verulam, the principles of nature ; and by Turner, her 
asjMct. All these were sent to unlock one of the gates 
of light, and to unlock it for the first time. But of all 
the three, though not the greatest. Turner was the most 
unprecedented in his work. Bacon did what Aristotle 
had attempted ; Shakspeare did perfectly what ^schylus 
did partially ; but none before Turner had lifted the 
veil from the face of nature ; the majesty of the hills 
and forests had received no interpretation, and the 
clouds passed unrecorded from the fall of the heaven 
which they adorned, and of the earth to which they 
ministered. — Lectures on Architecture and Faintmg, 
lect. iii. 



122 JOHN BUSKIN. 



THE SACKED COLOUR. 

If you want to colour beautifully, colour as best 
pleases yourself at quiet times, not so as to catch the 
eye, nor to look as if it were clever or difficult to. colour 
in that way, but so that the colour may be pleasant to 
you when you are happy, or thoughtful. Look much 
at the morning and evening sky, and much at simple 
flowers, — dog-roses, wood hyacinths, violets, poppies, 
thistles, heather, and such like — as Nature arranges 
them in the woods and fields. If ever any scientific 
person tells you that two colours are " discordant," make 
a note of the two colours and put them together when- 
ever you can. I have actually heard people say that 
blue and green were discordant ; the two colours which 
Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never 
to be felt in either of them in its full beauty without 
the other ! — a peacock's neck, or a blue sky through 
green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights through 
it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at 
sunrise, in this coloured world of ours. If you have a 
good eye for colours, you will soon find out how con- 
stantly Nature puts purple and green together, purple 
and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral gray, 
and the like ; and how she strikes these colour-concords 
for general tones, and then works into them with 
innumerable subordinate ones ; and you will gradually 



THE SACRED COLOUR. 123 

come to like what she does, and find out new and 
beautiful chords of colour in her work every day. If 
you enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint them to a 
certain point right: or, at least, if you do not enjoy 
them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If colour 
does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone 5 depend 
upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of 
people who feel colour, whenever you touch it ; and that 
is unkind and improper. — Elements of Drawing, letter iii. 

The fact is, we none of us enough appreciate the 
nobleness and sacredness of colour. Nothing is more 
common than to hear it spoken of as a subordinate 
beauty, — nay, even as the mere source of a sensual 
pleasure. . . . 

Such expressions are used for the most part in 
thoughtlessness ; and if the s^Dcakers would only take 
the pains to imagine what the world and their own 
existence would become, if the blue were taken from the 
sky, and the gold from the sunshine, and the verdure 
from the leaves, and the crimson from the blood which 
is the life of man, the flush from the cheek, the dark- 
ness from the eye, the radiance from the hair, — if they 
could but see for an instant, white human creatures 
living in a white world, — they would soon feel what 
they owe to colour. The fact is, that, of all God's gifts 
to the sight of man, colour is the holiest, the most 
divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay 
colour, and sad colour, for colour cannot at once be 
good and gay. All good colour is in some degree peii- 



124 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sive, the loveliest is melancholy, and the purest and 
most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the 
most. 

I know that this will sound strange in many ears, and 
will be especially startling to those who have considered 
the subject chiefly with reference to painting ; for the 
great Venetian schools of colour are not usually under- 
stood to be either pure or pensive, and the idea of its pre- 
eminence is associated in nearly every mind with the 
coarseness of Rubens, and the sensualities of Correggio 
and Titian. But a more comparative view of art will 
soon correct this impression. It will be discovered, in 
the first place, that the more faithful and earnest the 
religion of the painter, the more pure and prevalent is 
the system of his colour. It will be found in the second 
place, that wherever colour becomes a primal intention 
with a painter otherwise mean and sensual, it instantly 
elevates him, and becomes the one sacred and saving 
element in his work. The very depth of the stoop to 
which the Venetian painters and Rubens sometimes 
condescend, is a consequence of their feeling confidence 
in the power of their colour to keep them from falling. 
They hold on by it, as by a chain let down from heaven, 
with one hand, though they may sometimes seem to gather 
dust and ashes with the other. And, in the last place, 
it will be found that so surely as a painter is irre- 
ligious, thoughtless, or obscene in disposition, so surely 
is his colouring cold, gloomy, and valueless. The oppo- 
site poles of art in this respect are Fra Angelico and 
Salvator Rosa ; of whom the one was a man who smiled 



THE SACRED COLOUR. 125 

seldom, wept often, prayed constantly, and never 
harbored an impure thought. His pictures are simply 
so many pieces of jewelry, the colours of the draperies 
being perfectly pure, as various as those of a painted 
window, chastened only by paleness, and relieved upon 
a gold ground. Salvator was a dissipated jester and 
satirist, a man who spent his life in masking and 
revelry. But his pictures are full of horror, and their 
colour is for the most part gloomy gray. Truly it would 
seem as if art had so much of eternity in it, that it 
must take its dye from the close rather than the course 
of life : — "In such laughter the heart of man is sorrow- 
ful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness." . . . 

Nor does it seem difficult to discern a noble reason 
for this universal law. In that heavenly circle which 
binds the statutes of colour upon the front of the sky, 
when it became the sign of the covenant of peace, the 
pure hues of divided light were sanctified to the human 
heart forever ; nor this, it would seem, by mere arbi- 
trary appointment, but in consequence of the fore- 
ordained and marvellous constitution of those hues into 
a sevenfold, or, more strictly still, a threefold order, 
typical of the Divine nature itself. — Stones of Venice, 
vol. ii. chap. v. 

Nature herself produces all her loveliest colours in 
some kind of solid or liquid glass or crystal. The rain- 
bow is painted on a shower of melted glass, and the 
colours of the opal are produced in vitreous flint mixed 
with water; the green and blue, and golden or amber 



126 JOHN BUSKIN. 

brown of flowing water is in surface glassy, and in 
motion, " splendid'ior vitro.^^ And the loveliest colours 
ever granted to human sight — those of morning or 
evening clouds before or after rain — are produced on 
minute particles of finely divided water, or perhaps some- 
times, ice. But more than this. If you examine with a 
lens some of the richest colours of flowers, as, for 
instance, those of the gentian or dianthus, you will find 
their texture is produced by a crystalline or sugary frost- 
work upon them. In the lychnis of the high Alps, the 
red and white have a kind of sugary bloom, as rich as it 
is delicate. It is indescribable ; but if you can fancy 
very powdery and crystalline snow mixed with the 
softest cream, and then dashed with carmine, it may 
give you some idea of the look of it. There are no 
colours, either in the nacre of shells, or the plumes of 
birds and insects, which are so pure as those of clouds, 
opal, or flowers ; but the force of purple and blue in 
some butterflies, and the methods of clouding, and 
strength of burnished lustre, in plumage like the pea- 
cock's, give them more universal interest. . . . 

We have thus in nature, chiefly obtained by crystal- 
line conditions, a series of groups of entirely delicious 
hues ; and it is one of the best signs that the bodily 
system is in a healthy state when we can see these 
clearly in their most delicate tints, and enjoy them 
fully and simply, with the kind of enjoyment that 
children have in eating sweet things. I shall place a 
piece of rock opal on the table in your working-room. 
If on fine days you will sometimes dip it in water, take 



THE SACRED COLOUR. 127 

it into sunshine, and examine it with a lens of moderate 
power, you may always test your progress in sensibility 
to colour by the degree of pleasure that it gives you. . . . 

You remember I told you, when the colourists painted 
masses or projecting spaces, they, aiming always at 
colour, perceived from the first and held to the last the 
fact that shadows, though of course darker than the 
lights with reference to which they are shadows, are not, 
therefore, necessarily less vigorous colours, but perhaps 
more vigorous. Some of the most beautiful blues and 
purples in nature, for instance, are those of mountains 
in shadow against amber sky ; and the darkness of the 
hollow in the centre of a wild rose is one glow of orange 
fire, owing to the quantity of its yellow stamens. 

Well, the Venetians always saw this, and all great 
colourists see it, and are thus separated from the non- 
colourists or schools of mere chiaroscuro, not by differ- 
ence of style merely, but by being right while the others 
are wrong. It is an absolute fact that shadows are as 
much colours as lights are ; and whoever represents 
them by merely the subdued or darkened tint of the 
light represents them falsely. I particularly want you 
to observe that this is no matter of taste, but fact. If 
you are especially sober-minded, you may, indeed, choose 
sober colours where Venetians would have chosen gay 
ones ; that is a matter of taste ; you may think it proper 
for a hero to wear a dress without patterns on it, rather 
than an embroidered one ; that is similarly a matter of 
taste : but, though you may also think it would be 
dignified for a hero's limbs to be all black, or brown, on 



128 JOHN EUSKtn. 

the shaded side of them, yet, if you are using colour at 
all, you cannot so have him to your mind except by false- 
hood ; he never, under any circumstances, could be 
entirely black or brown on one side of him. 

In this, then, the Venetians are separate from other 
schools by rightness, and they are so to their last days. 
Venetian painting is in this matter always right. But 
also, in their early days, the colourists are separated from 
other schools by their contentment with tranquil cheer- 
fulness of light ; by their never wanting to be dazzled. 
None of their lights are flashing or blinding ; they are 
soft, winning, precious ; lights of pearl, not of lime : 
only, you know, on this condition, they cannot have sun- 
shine : their day is the day of Paradise ; they need no 
candle, neither light of the sun, in their cities ; and 
everything is seen clear as through crystal, far or near. 

This holds to the end of the fifteenth century. Then 
they begin to see that this, beautiful as it may be, is 
still a make-believe light ; that we do not live in the in- 
side of a pearl ; but in an atmosphere through which a 
burning sun shines thwartedly, and over which a sorrow- 
ful night must far prevail. And then the chiaroscurists 
succeed in persuading them of the fact that there is 
mystery in the day as in the night, and show them how 
constantly to see truly, is to see dimly. And also they 
teach them the brilliancy of light, and the degree in 
which it is raised from the darkness ; and, instead of 
their sweet and pearly peace, tempt them to look for 
the strength of flame and coruscation of lightning, and 
flash of sunshine on armour and on points of spears. 



THE SACRED COLOUR. 129 

The noble painters take the lesson nobly, alike for 
gloom or flame. Titian with deliberate strength, 
Tintoret with stormy passion, read it, side by side. 
Titian deepens the hues of his Assumption, as of his 
Entombment, into a solemn twilight ; Tintoret involves 
his earth in coils of volcanic cloud, and withdraws, 
through circle flaming above circle, the distant light 
of Paradise. Both of them, becoming naturalist and 
human, add the veracity of Holbein's intense portraiture 
to the glow and the dignity they had themselves inher- 
ited from the Masters of Peace: at the same moment 
another, as strong as they, and in pure felicity of art- 
faculty, even greater than they, but trained in a lower 
school, — Velasquez, — produced the miracles of colour 
and shadow-painting, which made Reynolds say of him, 
'^ What we all do with labour, he does with ease ; " and 
one more, Correggio, uniting the sensual element of the 
Greek schools with their gloom, and their light with 
their beauty, and all these with the Lombardic colour, 
became, as since I think it has been admitted without 
question, the captain of the painter's art as such. 
Other men have nobler or more numerous gifts, but as 
a painter, master of the art of laying colour so as to be 
lovely, Correggio is alone. 

I said the noble men learnt their lesson nobly. 
The base men also, and necessarily, learn it basely. 
The great men rise from colour to sunlight. The base 
ones fall from colour to candlelight. To-day, "7ion 
ragio7iiam di lor,^^ but let us see what this great change 
which perfects the art of painting mainly consists in, 



130 JOHN BUSKIN. 

and means. For though we are only at present speak- 
ing of technical matters, every one of them, I can 
scarcely too often repeat, is the outcome and sign of a 
mental character, and you can only understand the folds 
of the veil, by those of the form it veils. 

The complete painters, we find, have brought dimness 
and mystery into their method of colouring. That 
means that the world all round them has resolved to 
dream, or to believe, no more ; but to know, and to see. 
And instantly all knowledge and sight are given, no 
more as in the Gothic times, through a window of glass, 
brightly, but as through a telescope-glass, darkly. 
Your cathedral window shut you from the true sky, and 
illumined you with a vision ; your telescope leads you 
to the sky, but darkens its light, and reveals nebula 
beyond nebula, far and farther, and to no conceivable 
farthest — unresolvable. That is what the mystery 
means. — Lectures on Art, sees. 173-179. 



THE CONDITIONS OF ART. 131 



THE CONDITIONS OF ART. 

The changes in the state of this country are now so 
rapid, that it would be wholly absurd to endeavor to lay 
down laws of art education for it under its present 
aspect and circumstances ; and therefore I must neces- 
sarily ask, how much of it do you seriously intend with- 
in the next fifty years to be coalpit, brickfield, or 
quarry ? For the sake of distinctness of conclusion, I 
will suppose your success absolute : that from shore to 
shore the whole of the island is to be set as thick with 
chimneys as the masts stand in the docks of Liverpool : 
that there shall be no meadows in it ; no trees ; no 
gardens ; only a little corn grown upon the housetops, 
reaped and threshed by steam : that you do not leave 
even room for roads, but travel either over the roofs of 
your mills, on viaducts ; or under their floors, in tunnels : 
that, the smoke having rendered the light of the sun un- 
serviceable, you work always by the light of your own 
gas : that no acre of English ground shall be without its 
shaft and its engine ; and, therefore, no spot of English 
ground left, on which it shall be possible to stand, with- 
out a definite and calculable chance of being blown off 
it, at any moment, into small pieces. 

Under these circumstances (if this is to be the future 
of England), no designing or any other development of 
beautiful art will be possible. Do not vex your minds, 



18^ JOHN BUSKin. 

nor waste your money with any thought or effort in the 
matter. Beautiful art can only be produced by people 
who have beautiful things around them, and leisure to 
look at them ; and unless you provide some elements of 
beauty for your workmen to be surrounded by, you will 
find that no elements of beauty can be invented by 
them. 

I was struck forcibly by the bearing of this great fact 
upon our modern efforts at ornamentation, in an after- 
noon walk last week, in the suburbs of one of our large 
manufacturing towns. I was thinking of the difference 
in the effect in the designer's mind, between the scene 
which I then came upon, and the scene which would 
have presented itself to the eyes of any designer of the 
middle ages when he left his workshop. Just outside 
the town I came upon an old English cottage, or mansion, 
I hardly know which to call it, set close under the hill, 
and beside the river, perhaps built somewhere in the 
Charles's times, with muUioned windows and a low 
arched porch ; round which, in the little triangular 
garden, one can imagine the family as they used to sit 
in old summer times, the ripple of the river heard 
faintly through the sweet-brier hedge, and the sheep on 
the far-off wolds shining in the evening twilight. There, 
uninhabited for many and many a year, it had been left 
in unregarded havoc of ruin ; the garden-gate still swung 
loose to its latch; the garden, blighted utterly into a 
field of ashes, not even a weed taking root there ; the 
roof torn into shapeless rents; the shutters hanging 
about the windows in rae,s of rotten wood; before its 



THE CONDITIONS OF AltT. 133 

gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soaking 
slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling 
slum; the bank above it trodden into unctuous sooty 
slime : far in frout of it, between it and the old hills, ■ 
the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague 
of sulphurous darkness; the volumes of their storm 
clouds coiling low over a waste of grassless fields, fenced 
from each other, not by hedges, but by slabs of square 
stone, like gravestones, riveted together with iron. 

That was the scene for the designer's contemplation 
in his afternoon walk at Rochdale. Now fancy what 
was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon 
walk, to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa — Nino 
Pisano, or any of his men. 

On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of 
brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with 
deep red porphyry, and with serpentine; along their 
quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, 
noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield; 
horse and man one labyrinth of quaint color and gleam- 
ing light — the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes 
flowing over the strong limbs and clashing mail, like 
sea-waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side 
from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters ; long 
succession of white pillars among w^reaths of vine ; 
leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and 
orange : and still along the garden-paths, and under and 
through the crimson of the pomegranate shadows, 
moving slowly, groups of the fairest women that Italy 
ever saw — fairest because purest and thoughtfullest ; 



134 JOHN BUSKIN. 

trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art — 
in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in 
loftier courage, in loftiest love — able alike to cheer, to 
enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this 
scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower 
burning with white alabaster and gold : beyond dome 
and bell-tower the slopes of mighty hills hoary with 
olive ; far in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of 
solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mount- 
ains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit 
into amber sky; the great sea itself, scorching with 
expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the 
Gorgonian isles ; and over all these, ever present, near 
or far — seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with 
all its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with 
its depth of blue close against the golden hair and 
burning cheek of lady and knight, — that untroubled 
and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of 
innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, 
as the earth was of men ; and which opened straight 
through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the 
awfulness of the eternal world ; — a heaven in which 
every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an 
angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed 
from the throne of God. 

What think you of that for a school of design ? 

I do not bring this contrast before you as a ground of 
hopelessness in our task ; neither do I look for any 
possible renovation of the Kepublic of Pisa, at Bradford, 
in the nineteenth century ; but I put it before you in 



THE CONDITIONS OF ART. 135 

order that you may be aware precisely of the kind of 
difficulty you have to meet, and may then consider with 
yourselves how far you can meet it. To men surrounded 
by the depressing and monotonous circumstances of 
English manufacturing life, depend upon it, design is 
simply impossible. This is the most distinct of all the 
experiences I have had in dealing Avith the modern 
workman. He is intelligent and ingenious in the high- 
est degree — subtle in touch and keen in sight : but he 
is, generally speaking, wholly destitute of designing 
power. And if you want to give him the power, you 
must give him the materials, and put him in the circum- 
stances for it. Design is not the offspring of idle 
fancy : it is the studied result of accumulative observa- 
tion and delightful habit. Without observation and 
experience; no design — without peace and pleasurable- 
ness in occupation, no design — and all the lecturings 
and teachings, and prizes, and principles of art, in the 
world, are of no use, so long as you don't surround your 
men with happy influences and beautiful things. It is 
impossible for them to have right ideas about colour, 
unless they see the lovely colours of nature unspoiled ; 
impossible for them to supply beautiful incident and 
action in their ornament, unless they see beautiful 
incident and action in the world about them. Inform 
their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine 
their designs ; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, 
and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever 
they do will still be spurious, vulgar, and valueless. — ■ 
The Tivo Faths, sees. 89-92. 



136 JOHN RUSK IN. 

Let me now finally, and with all distinctness possible 
to me, state to you the main business of all Art; — its 
service in the actual uses of daily life. 

You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its 
main business. That is indeed so, however. The giving 
brightness to picture is much, but the giving brightness 
to life more. And remember, were it as patterns only, 
you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures. 
You cannot have a landscape by Turner, without a 
country for him to paint ; you cannot have a portrait by 
Titian, without a man to be pourtrayed. I need not 
prove that to you, I suppose, in these short terms ; but 
in the outcome I can get no soul to believe that the 
beginning of art is in getting our country clean and our 
people beautiful. I have been ten years trying to get 
this very plain certainty — I do not say believed — but 
even thought of, as anything but a monstrous proposi- 
tion. To get your country clean, and your people 
lovely ; — I assure you that is a necessary work of art 
to begin with ! There has indeed been art in countries 
where people lived in dirt to serve God, but never in 
countries where they lived in dirt to serve the devil. 
There has indeed been art where the people were not at 
all lovely, — where even their lips were thick — and their 
skins black, because the sun had looked upon them; 
but never in a country where the people were pale with 
miserable toil and deadly shade, and where the lips of 
youth, instead of being full with blood, were pinched 
by famine, or warped with poison. And now, therefore, 
note this well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. 



THE CONDITIONS OF ART. 137 

I said that tlie two great moral instincts were those of 
Order and Kindness. Now, all the arts are founded on 
agriculture by the hand, and on the graces, and kindness 
of feeding, and dressing, and lodging your people. 
Greek art begins in the gardens of Alcinous — perfect 
order, leeks in beds, and fountains in pipes. And Chris- 
tian art, as it arose out of chivalry, was only possible so 
far as chivalry compelled both kings and knights to 
care for the right personal training of their people ; it 
perished utterly when those kings and knights became 
drjfio^oQoi, devourers of the people. And it will become 
possible again only, when, literally, the sword is beaten 
into the ploughshare, when your St. George of England 
shall justify his name, and Christian art shall be known, 
as its Master was, in breaking of bread. . . . 

Now, I have given you my message, containing, as I 
know, offence enough, and itself, it may seem to many, 
unnecessary enough. But just in proportion to its 
apparent non-necessity, and to its certain offence, was 
its real need, and my real duty to speak it. . . . And 
therefore these are the things that I have first and last 
to tell you in this place : — that the fine arts are not to 
be learned by Locomotion, but by making the homes we 
live in lovely and by staying in them ; — that the fine 
arts are not to be learned by Competition, but by doing 
our quiet best in our own way ; — that the fine arts are 
not to be learned by Exhibition, but by doing what is 
right and making what is honest, whether it be exhib- 
ited or not ; — and, for the sum of all, that men must 
paint and build neither for pride nor for money, but for 



138 JOHN BUSKIN. 

love ; for love of their art, for love of their neighbour, 
and whatever better love may be than these, founded on 
these. . . . Begin with wooden floors; the tessellated 
ones will take care of themselves ; begin with thatching 
roofs, and you shall end by splendidly vaulting them ; 
begin by taking care that no old eyes fail over their 
Bibles, nor young ones over their needles, for want of 
rushlight, and then you may have whatever true good is 
to be got out of coloured glass or wax candles. And in 
thus putting the arts to universal use, you will find also 
their universal inspiration, their universal benediction. 
— Lectures on Art^ sees. 116, 124. 



RUSKIN THE STUDENT OF SOCIOLOGY. 



" Government and Co-operation are in all things and eternally the 
Laws of Life. Anarchy and Competition eternally and in all things 
the Laws of Death." — Modern Painters. 



PRELUDE. 

In the fifth volume of Modern Painters, Mr. Riiskin wrote 
this sentence. Stated in a general form, it escaped notice as a 
truism : applied and reiterated throughout his later writings, 
it has exposed him to the invective and ridicule of his age. 
For nearly thirty years, he has stood practically alone in Eng- 
land. Alone, but for one man, — the rugged prophet, Thomas 
Carlyle, whom Ruskin delights to call, with loving reverence, 
his "Master." Not only in emotional appeal and in attacks 
on social corruption does Ruskin resemble Carlyle. There is 
to be found in both men a body of positive teaching almost 
identical in proposal of practical methods and solutions. 
"Past and Present "is the best commentary on "Unto This 
Last." 

Doubtless, one reason for the antagonism shown to Ruskin 
as an economist, was the impossibility of classifying him. He 
bewildered people. The English public understood a Tory: 
it understood a Radical. Ruskin was both and neither. He 
called himself a vehement Tory of the old school: yet he 
criticised the wage-system, which lies at the foundation of the 
present social order, like a Communist. He denounced liberty : 



140 JOHN BUSKIN. 

yet he hated oppression. No wonder that men shook their 
puzzled heads, and bewailed Raskin's passion for paradox. 

The paradox of one generation is the truism of the next. 
In some respects, Mr. Ruskin still remains inexplicable and 
unique. Few men would sympathize with his dislike of steam- 
machinery, or with other details of his theories. Yet, broadly 
speaking, the word has been found which explains and recon- 
ciles his seeming conti-adictions. That word is Socialism. 

A Socialist, in the cruder sense, Ruskin is not. He dis- 
avows the title : and a passage such as that on page 176 shows 
how moderate and conservative a position he takes towards 
the inequalities of wealth. Yet a Socialist of the higher and 
of the Christian type he essentially is, for in the theory of 
Socialism alone can be found the harmony for which he pleads 
between radical and conservative elements of social thought. 

On Ruskin's ideas as a w'hole, judgment cannot yet be 
passed. One fact is, however, certain. As regards his great 
central thesis, England has slowly been growing towards him. 
" May not the manufacture of Souls of a good quality be 
worthy our attention ? " asked he, thirty years ago ; and politi- 
cal economists scoffed at the sentimental thought that a moral 
and human element could enter as factor into the science of 
economics. To-day, the ground has changed : the jNIanchester 
school, wdth its mechanical and fixed system, based on uni- 
versal self-interest, speaks more feebly : most thinkers at last 
ao-ree that from the science of human relations, Avhich eco- 
nomics really is, the human elements of love, of honour, of 
sacrifice cannot be excluded : and more and more all men are 
coming to recognize the literal and absolute truth, in finance 
as in morals, of the noble words which sum up Ruskin's 
teaching, " There is no Wealth but Life." 



FEINCIPLES AND FACTS. 141 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. 

DEFINITIONS. 

As domestic economy regulates the acts and habits of 
a household, political economy regulates those of a 
society or State, with reference to the means of its 
maintenance. 

Political economy is neither an art nor a science ; but 
a system of conduct and legislature, founded on the 
sciences, directing the arts, and impossible, except under 
certain conditions of moral culture. . . . 

By the " maintenance " of a State is to be understood 
the support of its population in healthy and happy life ; 
and the increase of their numbers, so far as that increase 
is consistent with their happiness. It is not the object 
of political economy to increase the numbers of a nation 
at the cost of common health or comfort ; nor to increase 
indefinitely the comfort of individuals, by sacrifice of 
surrounding lives, or possibilities of life. 

The assumption which lies at the root of nearly all 
erroneous reasoning on political economy, — namely, 
that its object is to accumulate money or exchangeable 
property, — may be shown in a few words to be without 
foundation. For no economist would admit national 
economy to be legitimate which proposed to itself only 
the building of a pyramid of gold. He would declare 



142 JOHN BUSKIN. 

the gold to be wasted, were it to remain in the monu- 
mental form, and would say it ought to be employed. 
But to what end ? Either it must be used only to gain 
more gold, and build a larger pyramid, or for some pur- 
pose other than the gaining of gold. And this other 
purpose, however at first apprehended, will be found to 
resolve itself finally into the service of man ; — that is 
to say, the extension, defence, or comfort of his life. 
The golden pyramid may perhaps be providently built, 
perhaps improvidently ; but the wisdom or folly of 
the accumulation can only be determined by our having 
first clearly stated the aim of all economy, namely, the 
extension of life. 

If the accumulation of money, or of exchangeable 
property, were a certain means of extending existence, 
it would be useless, in discussing economical questions, 
to fix our attention upon the more distant object — life 
— instead of the immediate one — money. But it is not 
so. Money may sometimes be accumulated at the cost 
of life, or by limitations of it ; that is to say, either by 
hastening the deaths of men, or preventing their births. 
It is therefore necessary to keep clearly in view the 
ultimate object of economy ; and to determine the expe- 
diency of minor operations with reference to that 
ulterior end. 

It has been just stated that the object of political 
economy is the continuance not only of life, but of 
healthy and happy life. But all true happiness is both 
a consequence and cause of life : it is a sign of its vigor, 
and source of its continuance. All true suffering is in 



PBINCIPLES AND FACTS. 14B 

like manner a consequence and cause of death. I shall 
therefore, in future, use the word " Life " singly : but let 
it be understood to include in its signification the happi- 
ness and power of the entire human nature, body and soul. 
That human nature, as its Creator made it, and main- 
tains it wherever His laws are observed, is entirely 
harmonious. No physical error can be more profound, 
no moral error more dangerous, than that involved in 
the monkish doctrine of the opposition of body to soul. 
No soul can be perfect in an imperfect body : no body 
perfect without perfect soul. Every right action and 
true thought sets the seal of its beauty on person and 
face; every wrong action and foul thought, its seal of 
distortion ; and the various aspects of humanity might 
be read as jjlainly as a printed history, were it not that 
the impressions are so complex that it must always in 
some cases (and, in the present state of our knowledge, 
in all cases) be impossible to decipher them completely. 
Nevertheless, the face of a consistently just, and of a 
consistently unjust person, may always be rightly dis- 
tinguished at a glance ; and if the qualities are contin- 
ued by descent through a generation or two, there arises 
a complete distinction of race. Both moral and phys- 
ical qualities are communicated by descent, far more 
than they can be developed by education (though both 
may be destroyed by want of education) ; and there is as 
yet no ascertained limit to the nobleness of person and 
mind which the human creature may attain, by perse- 
vering observance of the laws of God respecting its birth 
and training. 



144 JOHN BUSKIN. 

We must therefore yet farther define the aim of 
political economy to be " The multiplication of human 
life at the highest standard." It might at first seem 
questionable whether we should endeavour to maintain 
a small number of persons of the highest type of beauty 
and intelligence, or a larger number of an inferior class. 
But I shall be able to show in the sequel, that the way 
to maintain the largest number is first to aim at the 
highest standard. Determine the noblest type of man, 
and aim simply at maintaining the largest possible 
number of persons of that class, and it will be found 
that the largest possible number of every healthy sub- 
ordinate class must necessarily be produced also. 

The perfect type of manhood, as just stated, involves 
the perfections (whatever we may hereafter determine 
these to be) of his body, affections, and intelligence. 
The material things, therefore, which it is the object of 
political economy to produce and use (or accumulate 
for use), are things which serve either to sustain and 
comfort the body, or exercise rightly the affections and 
form the intelligence. Whatever truly serves either of 
these purposes is " useful " to man, wholesome, healthful, 
helpful, or holy. By seeking such things, man prolongs 
and increases his life upon the earth. 

On the other hand, whatever does not serve either of 
these purposes — much more whatever counteracts them 
— is in like manner useless to man, unwholesome, un- 
helpful, or unholy ; and by seeking such things man 
shortens and diminishes his life upon the earth. 

And neither with respect to things useful or useless 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. l45 

can man's estimate of them alter their nature. Certain 
substances being good for his food, and others noxious 
to him, what he thinks or wishes respecting them can 
neither change, nor prevent, their power. If he eats 
Corn, he will live ; if nightshade, he will die. If he pro- 
duce or make good and beautiful things, they will Be- 
Create him (note the solemnity and weight of the 
word) ; if bad and ugly things, they will " corrupt," or 
"break in pieces," — that is, in the exact degree of 
their power, Kill him. For every hour of labour, how- 
ever enthusiastic or well intended, which he spends for 
that which is not bread, so much possibility of life is 
lost to him. His fancies, likings, beliefs, however 
brilliant, eager, or obstinate, are of no avail if they are 
set on a false object. Of all that he has laboured for, 
the eternal law of heaven and earth measures out to him 
for reward, to the utmost atom, that part which he 
ought to have laboured for, and withdraws from him (or 
enforces on him, it may be), inexorably, that part which 
he ought not to have laboured for, until, on his summer 
threshing-floor, stands his heap of corn ; little or much, 
not according to his labour, but to his discretion. No 
" commercial arrangements," no painting of surfaces, nor 
alloying of substances, will avail him a pennyweight. 
Nature asks of him calmly and inevitably. What have 
you found, or formed — the right thing or the wrong ? 
By the right thing you shall live ; by the wrong you 
shall die. 

To thoughtless persons it seems otherwise. The 
world looks to them as if they could cozen it out of 



146 JOHN RUSEIN. 

some ways and means of life. But they cannot cozen 
IT : they can only cozen their neighbours. The world 
is not to be cheated of a grain; not so much as a 
breath of its air can be drawn surreptitiously. For 
every piece of wise work done, so much life is granted ; 
for every piece of foolish work, nothing ; for every 
piece of wicked work, so much death is allotted. This 
is as sure as the courses of day and night. But when 
the means of life are once produced, men, by their 
various struggles and industries of accumulation or 
exchange, may variously gather, waste, restrain, or dis- 
tribute them ; necessitating, in proportion to the waste 
or restraint, accurately, so much more death. The rate 
and range of additional death are measured by the rate 
and range of waste ; and are inevitable ; — the only ques- 
tion (determined mostly by fraud in peace, and force in 
war) is. Who is to die, and how ? 

Such being the everlasting law of human existence, 
the essential work of the political economist is to deter- 
mine what are in reality useful or life-giving things, 
and by what degrees and kinds of labour they are 
attainable and distributable. — Munera Pulveris, sees. 
1-11. 

ARRAIGNMENT. 

There are three Material things, not only useful, but 
essential to life. No one " knows how to live " till he 
has got them. 

These are. Pure Air, Water, and Earth. 

There are three Immaterial things, not only useful, 



^ PBINCIPLES AND FACTS. 147 

but essential to Life. No one knows how to live till he 
has got them also. 

These are, Admiration, Hope, and Love. 

Admiration, the power of discerning and taking delight 
in what is beautiful in visible form, and lovely in human 
Character ; and, necessarily, striving to produce what is 
beautiful in form, and to become what is lovely in char- 
acter. 

Hope, the recognition, by true Foresight, of better 
things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or 
others ; necessarily issuing in the straightforward and 
undisappointable effort to advance, according to our 
proper power, the gaining of them. 

Love, both of family and neighbor, faithful, and 
satisfied. 

There are the six chiefly useful things to be got by 
Political Economy, when it has become a Science. I 
will briefly tell you what modern Political Economy — 
the great "savoir mourir" — is doing with them. 

The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and 
Earth. 

Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You 
can destroy them at your pleasure, or increase, almost 
without limit, the available quantities of them. 

You can vitiate the air by your manner of life, and of 
death, to any extent. You might easily vitiate it so as 
to bring such a pestilence on the globe as would end all 
of you. . . . But everywhere, and all day long, you are 
vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations ; and the hor- 
rible nests, which you call towns, are little more than 



148 JOHN EUSKm. 

laboratories for the distillation into heaven of venomous 
smokes and smells. . . . 

On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, 
by dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in 
corruption ; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufact- 
ures ; and by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse 
and invigorate earth and atmosphere, — is literally in- 
linite. You might make every breath of air you draw, 
food. 

Secondly, your power over the rain . and river-waters 
of the earth is infinite. You can bring rain where you 
will, by planting wisely and tending carefully ; — drought, 
where you will, by ravage of woods and neglect of the 
soil. You might have the rivers of England as pure as 
the crystal of the rock ; — beautiful in falls, in lakes, in 
living pools 5 — so full of fish that you might take them 
out with your hands instead of nets. Or you may do 
always as you have done now, turn every river of 
England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so 
much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless 
you hold its face out in the rain ; and even that falls 
dirty. 

Then for the third. Earth, — meant to be nourishing 
for you, and blossoming ... as far as your scientific 
hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and 
deathful, instead of blossoming and life-giving. Dust, can 
contrive, you have turned the Mother Earth, Demeter, 
into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone — with the voice of 
your brother's blood crying out of it, in one wild har- 
mony round all its murderous sphere. 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. 149 

That is what you have done for the Three Material 
Useful Things. 

Then for the Three Immaterial Useful Things. For 
Admiration, you have learned contempt and conceit. 
There is no lovely thing ever yet done by man that you 
care for, or can understand ; but you are persuaded you 
are able to do much finer things yourselves. . . . 

Then, secondly, for Hope. You have not so much spirit 
of it in you as to begin any plan which will not pay for ten 
years ; nor so much intelligence of it in you (either 
politicians or workmen), as to be able to form one clear 
idea of what you would like your country to become. 

Then, thirdly, for Love. You were ordered by the 
Founder of your religion to love your neighbour as 
yourselves. 

You have founded an entire science of Political Econ- 
omy, on what you have stated to be the constant instinct 
of man — the desire to defraud his neighbor. — Fors 
Clavigera, letter v. 



■^S)^ 



WEALTH AND LIFE. 

I have spoken of the flowing of streams to the sea as a 
partial image of the action of wealth. In one respect it 
is not a partial, but a perfect image. The popular 
economist thinks himself wise in having discovered that 
wealth, or the forms of property in general, must go 
where they are required ; that where demand is, supply 
must follow. He farther declares that this course of 
demand and supply cannot be forbidden by human laws. 
Precisely in the same sense, and with the same certainty, 



150 JOHN RVSKIN. 

the waters of the world go where they are required. 
Where the land falls, the water flows. The course neither 
of clouds nor rivers can be forbidden by human will. 
But the disposition and administration of them can be 
altered by human forethought. Whether the stream 
shall be a curse or a blessing, depends upon man's labour, 
and administrating intelligence. For centuries after 
centuries, great districts of the world, rich in soil, and 
favoured in climate, have lain desert under the rage of 
their own rivers ; nor only desert, but plague-struck. 
The stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed 
in soft irrigation from field to field — would have purified 
the air, given food to man and beast, and carried their 
burdens for them on its bosom — now overwhelms the 
plain and poisons the wind ; its breath pestilence, and 
its work famine. In like manner this wealth ^'goes 
where it is required." No human laws can withstand 
its flow. They can only guide it : but this, the leading 
trench and limiting mound can do so thoroughly, that it 
shall become water of life — the riches of the hand of wis- 
dom ; or, on the contrary, by leaving it to its own lawless 
flow, they may make it, what it has been too often, the last 
and deadliest of national plagues : water of Marah — the 
water which feeds the roots of all evil. — Unto This Last, iii. 

It is impossible to conclude, of any given mass of 
acquired wealth, merely by the fact of its existence, 
whether it signifies good or evil to the nation in the 
midst of which it exists. Its real value depends on the 
moral sign attached to it, just as sternly as that of a 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. 151 

mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical sign 
attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial 
wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful 
industries, progressive energies, and productive ingenui- 
ties ; or, on the other, it ma}^ be indicative of mortal 
luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some 
treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored 
harvest with untimely rain ; and some gold is brighter 
in sunshine than it is in substance. 

And these are not, observe, merely moral or pathetic 
attributes of riches, which the seeker of riches may, if 
he chooses, despise ; they are, literally and sternly, 
material attributes of riches, depreciating or exalting, 
incalculably, the monetary signification of the sum in 
question. One mass of money is the outcome of action 
which has created, — another, of action which has 
annihilated, — ten times as much in the gathering of it ; 
such and such strong hands have been paralyzed, as if 
they had been numbed by nightshade : so many strong 
men's courage broken, so many productive operations 
hindered; this and the other false direction given to 
labour, and lying image of prosperity set up, on Dura 
plains dug into seven-times-heated furnaces. That which 
seems to be wealth may in verit}^ be only the gilded 
index of far-reaching ruin ; a wrecker's handful of coin 
gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an 
argosy; a camp-follower's bundle of rags unwrapped 
from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead ; the purchase- 
pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall be buried together 
the citizen and the stranger. 



152 JOHN BUSKIN. 

And therefore, the idea that directions can be given 
for the gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consid- 
eration of its moral sources, or that any general and 
technical law of purchase and gain can be set down for 
national practice, is perhaps the most insolently futile 
of all that ever beguiled men through their vices. So 
far as I know, there is not in history record of anything 
so disgraceful to the human intellect as the modern idea 
that the commercial text, " Buy in the cheapest market 
and sell in the dearest," represents, or under any cir- 
cumstances could represent, an available principle of 
national economy. Buy in the cheapest market ? — 
yes ; but what made your market cheap ? Charcoal 
may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and 
bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake ; 
but fire and earthquake may not therefore be national 
benefits. Sell in the dearest? — yes, truly; but what 
made your market dear ? You sold your bread well to- 
day ; was it to a dying man who gave his last coin for 
it, and will never need bread more, or to a rich man 
who to-morrow will buy your farm over your head ; or to 
a soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which you 
have put your fortune ? 

None of these things you can know. One thing only 
you can know, namely, whether this dealing of yours is 
a just and faithful one, which is all you need concern 
yourself about respecting it ; sure thus to have done 
your own part in bringing about ultimately in the world 
a state of things which will not issue in pillage or in 
death. And thus every question concerning these 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. 153 

things merges itself ultimately in the great question of 
justice, which, the ground being thus far cleared for it, 
I will enter upon in the next paper, leaving only, in 
this, three final points for the reader's consideration. 

It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of 
money consists in its having power over human beings ; 
that, without this power, large material possessions are 
useless, and to any person possessing such power, com- 
paratively unnecessary. But power over human beings 
is attainable by other means than by money. As I said 
a few pages back, the money power is always imperfect 
and doubtful : there are many things which cannot be 
reached with it, others which cannot be retained by it. 
Many jo3^s may be given to men which cannot be bought 
for gold, and many fidelities found in them which can- 
not be rewarded with it. 

Trite enough, — the reader thinks. Yes : but it is not 
so trite, — I wish it were, — that in this moral power, 
quite inscrutable and immeasurable though it be, there 
is a monetary value just as real as that represented by 
more ponderous currencies. A man's hand may be full 
of invisible gold, and the wave of it, or the grasp, shall 
do more than another's with a shower of bullion. This 
invisible gold, also, does not necessarily diminish in 
spending. Political economists will do well some day 
to take heed of it, though they cannot take measure. 

But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists in 
its authority over men, if the apparent or nominal 
wealth fail in this power, it fails in essence ; in fact, 
ceases to be wealth at all. It does not appear lately in 



154 JOHN BUSKIN. 

England, that our authority over men is absolute. The 
servants show some disposition to rush riotously up- 
stairs, under an impression that their wages are not 
regularly paid. We should augur ill of any gentleman's 
property to whorn this happened every other day in his 
drawing-room. 

So, also, the power of our wealth seems limited as 
respects the comfort of the servants, no less than their 
quietude. The persons in the kitchen appear to be ill- 
dressed, squalid, half-starved. One cannot help imagin- 
ing that the riches of the establishment must be of a 
very theoretical and documentary character. 

Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in 
power over men, will it not follow that the nobler and 
the more in number the persons are over whom it has 
power, the greater the wealth ? Perhaps it may even 
appear after some consideration, that the persons them- 
selves are the wealth — that these pieces of gold with 
j\^hich we are in the habit of guiding them, are, in fact, 
nothing more than a kind of Byzantine harness or 
trappings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric 
sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures ; but that if 
these same living creatures could be guided without the 
fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their mouths 
and ears, they might themselves be more valuable than 
their bridles. In fact, it may be discovered that the 
true veins of wealth are purple — and not in Kock, but 
in Flesh — perhaps even that the final outcome and 
consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many 
as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy- 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. 155 

hearted human creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, 
has rather a tendency the other way ; — most political 
economists appearing to consider multitudes of human 
creatures not conducive to wealth, or at best conducive 
to it only by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow- 
chested state of being. 

Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, 
which I leave to the reader's pondering whether, among 
national manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality 
may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative 
one ? Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamed-of 
hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all 
thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric 
nations among whom they first arose ; and that, while 
the sands of the Indus and adamant of Golconda may 
yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash from 
the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may 
at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a 
Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her sons, say- 
ing, — 

" These are my Jewels." 

— Unto This Last, ii. 

THE STATE AND THE WORKMAN. 

The general principles by which employment should 
be regulated may be briefly stated as follows : — 

1. There being three great classes of mechanical 
powers at our disposal, namely (a) vital or muscular 
power ; (h) natural mechanical power of wind, water, and 
electricity ; and (c) artificially produced mechanical 



156 JOHN BUSKIN. 

power ; it is the first principle of economy to use all 
available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural 
forces, and only at last to have recourse to artificial 
power. And this, because it is always better for a man 
to work with his own hands to feed and clothe himself, 
than to stand idle while a machine works for him ; and 
if he cannot, by all the labour healthily possible to him, 
feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an inex- 
pensive machine — as a wind-mill or water-mill — than a 
costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have natural 
force enough at our disposal. Whereas at present we 
continually hear economists regret that the water-power 
of the cascades or streams of a country should be lost, 
but hardly ever that the muscular power of its idle in- 
habitants should be lost ; and again, we see vast districts, 
as the south of Provence, where a strong wind blows 
steadily all day long for six days out of seven throughout 
the year, without a windmill, while men are continually 
employed a hundred miles to the north, in digging fuel 
to obtain artificial power. But the principal point of 
all to be kept in view is, that in every idle arm and 
shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quan- 
tity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel ; and 
that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, 
while the vital force is unused ; and not only unused, but, 
in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste 
our coal, and spoil our humanity at one and the same 
instant. Therefore, wherever there is an idle arm, always 
save coal with it, and the stores of England will last all 
the longer. And precisely the same argument answers 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. 157 

the common one about " taking employment out of the 
hands of the industrious labourer." Why, what is "em- 
ployment '- but the putting out of vital force instead of 
mechanical force? We are continually in search of 
means of strength, — to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to 
carry ; we waste our future resources to get this strength, 
while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in 
mere pestiferous breath, and production of its variously 
noisome forms of ashes ! Clearly, if we want fire for 
force, we want men for force first. The industrious 
hands must already have so much to do that they can 
do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them. 
Then use the idle hands first. Instead of dragging pe- 
troleum with a steam-engine, put it on a canal, and drag it 
with human arms and shoulders. Petroleum cannot pos- 
sibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always 
order that, and many other things, time enough before 
we want it. So, the carriage of everything which does 
not spoil by keeping may most wholesomely and safely 
be done by water-traction and sailing vessels; and no 
healthier work can men be put to, nor better discipline, 
than such active porterage. 

2. In employing all the muscular power at our 
disposal we are to make the employments we choose 
as educational as possible. For a wholesome human em- 
ployment is the first and best method of education, mental 
as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, row, or steer 
well, and a woman taught to cook properly, and make a 
dress neatly, are already educated in many essential 
moral habits. Labour considered as a discipline has 



158 JOHN BUSKIN. 

hitherto been thought of only for criminals ; but the real 
and noblest function of labour is to X3revent crime, and 
not to be JSeformatory, but Formatory. 

The third great principle of employment is, that when- 
ever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced 
occupation should be directed to the production of useful 
articles only, that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, 
of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, 
and preserving these. It is yet little understood by 
economists, and not at all by the public, that the em- 
ployment of persons in a useless business cannot relieve 
ultimate distress. The money given to employ riband- 
makers at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn 
from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton: 
or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. We 
must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it 
cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. 
If we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend 
it ; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into 
some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay navvies 
for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay 
riband or button makers for making useless ribands or 
buttons ; we cannot lose it (unless by actually destroying 
it) without giving employment of some kind ; and there- 
fore, whatever quantity of money exists, the relative 
quantity of employment must some day come out of it ; 
but the distress of the nation signifies that the employ- 
ments given have produced nothing that will support its 
existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or 
velvet, or by going quickly from place to place ; and every 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. 159 

coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so 
much, withdrawn from the national means of life. One 
of the most beautiful uses of railroads is to enable A to 
travel from the town of X to take away the business of 
B in the town of Y ; while, in the mean time, B travels 
from the town of Y to take away' A's business in the 
town of X. But the national wealth is not increased by 
these operations. Whereas every coin spent in cultivat- 
ing ground, in repairing lodging, in making necessary 
and good roads, in preventing danger by sea or land, and 
in carriage of food or fuel where they are required, is so 
much absolute and direct gain to the whole nation. To 
cultivate land round Coventry makes living easier at 
Honiton, and every acre of land gained from the sea in 
Lincolnshire makes life easier all over England. 

Fourth, and lastly. Since for every idle person, some one 
else must be working somewhere to provide him with 
clothes and food, and doing, therefore, double the quan- 
tity of work that Avould be enough for his own needs, it 
is only a matter of pure justice to compel the idle person 
to work for his maintenance himself. The conscription 
has been used in many countries, to take away labour- 
ers who supported their families, fromtheir useful work, 
and maintain them for purposes chiefly of military display 
at the public expense. Since this has been long endured 
by the most civilized nations, let it not be thought that 
they would not much more gladly endure a conscription 
which should seize only the vicious and idle, already 
.living by criminal procedures at the public expense ; and 
which should discipline and educate them to labour 



160 JOHN BUSKIN. 

which would rfot only mcaintain themselves, but be serv- 
iceable to the commonwealth. The question is simply 
this : — we miist feed the drunkard, vagabond, and thief; 
— but shall we do so by letting them steal their food, 
and do no work for it ? or shall we give them their food 
in appointed quantity, and enforce their doing work 
which shall be worth it ? and which, in process of time, 
will redeem their own characters, and make them happy 
and serviceable members of society ? — The Queen of the 
Air. 



FALLACIES. 161 



FALLACIES. 

PRODUCTION OF LUXURIES. 

Whenever we spend money, we of course set people 
to work : that is the meaning of spending money ; we 
may, indeed, lose it without employing anybody ; but, 
whenever we spend it, we set a number of people to 
work, greater or less, of course, according to the rate of 
wages, but, in the long run, proportioned to the sum we 
spend. Well, your shallow people, because they see 
that however they spend money they are always employ- 
ing somebody, and, therefore, doing some good, think and 
say to themselves, that it is all one how they spend it 
— that all their apparently selfish luxury is, in reality, 
unselfish, and is doing just as much good as if they gave 
all their money away, or perhaps more good ; and I have 
heard foolish people even declare it as a principle of 
political economy, that whoever invented a new want 
conferred a good on the community. I have not words 
strong enough, — at least, I could not, without shocking 
you, use the words which would be strong enough, — to 
express my estimate of the absurdity and the mischiev- 
ousness of this popular fallacy. So, putting a great 
restraint upon myself, and using no hard words, I will 
simply try to state the nature of it, and the extent of 
its influence. 



162 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Granted, that whenever we spend money for whatever 
purpose, we set people to work ; and passing by, for the 
moment, the question whether the work we set them to 
is all equally healthy and good for them, we will assume 
that whenever we spend a guinea we provide an equal 
number of people with healthy maintenance for a given 
time. But, by the way in which we spend it, we 
entirely direct the labour of these people during that 
given time. We become their masters or mistresses, 
and we compel them to produce, within a certain period, 
a certain article. Now, that article may be a useful and 
lasting one, or it may be a useless and perishable one — 
it may be one useful to the whole community, or useful 
only to ourselves. And our selfishness and folly, or our 
virtue and prudence are shown, not by our spending 
money, but by our spending it for the wrong or the 
right thing ; and we are wise and kind, not in maintain- 
ing a certain number of people for a given period, but 
only in requiring them to produce, during that period, 
the kind of things which shall be useful to society, in- 
stead of those which are only useful to ourselves. 

Thus, for instance : if jon are a young lady, and em- 
ploy a certain number of sempstresses for a given time, 
in making a given number of simple and serviceable 
dresses — suppose, seven; of which you can wear one 
yourself for half the winter, and give six away to poor 
girls who have none, you are spending your money un- 
selfishly. But if you employ the same number of 
sempstresses for the same number of days, in making 
four, or five, or six beautiful flounces for your own ball- 



FALLACIES. 163 

dress — flounces which will clothe no one but yourself, 
and which you will yourself be unable to wear at more 
than one ball — you are employing your money selfishly. 
You have maintained, indeed, in each case, the same 
number of people ; but in the one case you have directed 
their labor to the service of the community; in the 
other case, you have consumed it wholly upon yourself. 
I don't say you are never to do so; I don't say you 
ought not sometimes to think of yourselves only, and to 
make yourselves as pretty as you can ; only do not con- 
fuse coquettishness with benevolence, nor cheat your- 
selves into thinking that all the finery you can wear is 
so much put into the hungry mouths of those beneath 
you : it is not so ; it is what you yourselves, whether 
you will or no, must sometimes instinctively feel it to 
be — it is what those who stand shivering in the streets, 
forming a line to watch you as you step out of your 
carriages, knoiv it to be ; those fine dresses do not mean 
that so much has been put into their mouths, but that 
so much has been taken out of their mouths. The real 
politico-economical signification of every one of these 
beautiful toilettes, is just this : that you have had a 
certain number of people put for a certain number of 
days wholly under your authority, by the sternest of 
slave-masters — hunger and cold; and you have said to 
them, " I will feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give 
you fuel for so many days ; but during those days you 
shall work for me only : your little brothers need 
clothes, but you shall make none for them : your sick 
friend needs clothes, but you shall make none for her : 



164 JOHN BUSKIN. 

you yourself will soon need another and a warmer dress, 
but you shall make none for yourself. You shall make 
nothing but lace and roses for me ; for this fortnight to 
come, you shall work at the patterns and petals, and 
then I will crush and consume them away in an hour/' 
You will perhaps answer, " It may not be particularly 
benevolent to do this, and we won't call it so ; but at 
any rate we do no wrong in taking their labour when we 
pay them their wages : if we pay for their work, we 
have a right to it." No ; — a thousand times no. The 
labour which you have paid for, does indeed become, by 
the art of purchase, your own labour : you have bought 
the hands and the time of those workers ; they are, by 
right and justice, your own hands, your own time. But 
have 3' ou a right to spend your own time, to work with 
your own hands, only for your own advantage ? — much 
more, when, by purchase, you have invested your own 
person with the strength of others ; and added to your 
own life, a part of the life of others ? You may, indeed, 
to a certain extent, use their labour for your delight : 
remember, I am making no general assertions against 
splendour of dress, or pomp of accessories of life ; on 
the contrary, there are many reasons for thinking that 
we do not at present attach enough importance to beau- 
tiful dress, as one of the means of influencing general 
taste and character. But I do say, that you must weigh 
the value of what you ask these workers to produce for 
you in its own distinct balance : that on its own worthi- 
ness or desirableness rests the question of your kindness, 
and not merely on the fact of your having employed 



FALLACIES, 165 

people in producing it : and I say further, that as long 
as there are cold and nakedness in the land around you, 
so long there can be no question at all but that splen- 
dour of dress is a crime. In due time, when we have 
nothing better to set people to work at, it may be right 
to let them make lace and cut jewels; but as long as 
there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and 
no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making 
and tailoring we must set people to work at — not lace. 

And it would be strange, if at any great assembly 
which, while it dazzled the young and the thoughtless, 
beguiled the gentler hearts that beat beneath the em- 
broidery, with a placid sensation of luxurious benevo- 
lence — as if by all that they wore in waywardness of 
beauty, comfort had been first given to the distressed, 
and aid to the indigent ; it would be strange, I say, if, 
for a moment, the spirits of Truth and of Terror, which 
walk invisibly among the masques of the earth, would 
lift the dimness from our erring thoughts, and show us 
how, — inasmuch as the sums exhausted for that mag- 
nificence would have given back the failing breath to 
many an unsheltered outcast on moor and street — they 
who wear it have literally entered into partnership with 
Death, and dressed themselves in his spoils. Yes, if 
the veil could be lifted not only from your thoughts, 
but from your human sight, you would see — the angels 
do see — on those gay white dresses of yours, strange 
dark spots, and crimson patterns that you knew not of 
— spots of the inextinguishable red that all the seas can- 
not wash away ; yes, and among the pleasant flowers that 



166 JOHN BUSKIN. 

crown your fair heads, and glow on your wreathed hair, 
you would see that one weed was always twisted which 
no one thought of — the grass that grows on graves. — 
A Joy Forever, i. 

COMPETITION. 

Supposing half a dozen or a dozen men were cast 
ashore from a wreck on an uninhabited island, and left 
to their own resources, one, of course, according to his 
capacity, would be set to one business and one to another ; 
the strongest to dig and to cut wood, and to build huts 
for the rest ; the most dexterous to make shoes out of bark 
and coats out of skins ; the best educated to look for iron 
or lead in the rocks, and to plan the channels for the irri- 
gation of the fields. But though their labours were thus 
naturally severed, that small group of shipwrecked men 
would understand well enough that the speediest prog- 
ress was to be made by helping each other, — not by 
opposing each other : and they would know that this help 
could only be properly given, so long as they were frank 
and open in their relations, and the difficulties which 
each lay under properly explained to the rest. So that 
any appearance of secrecy or separateness in the actions 
of any of them would instantly, and justly, be looked 
upon with suspicion by the rest, as the sign of some selfish 
or foolish proceeding on the part of the individual. . . . 

And, just as the best and richest result of wealth and 
happiness to the whole of them would follow on their 
perseverance in such a system of frank communication 
and of helpful labour ; — so precisely the worst and poor- 



FALLACIES. 167 

est result would be obtained by a system of secrecy and 
of enmity ; and each man's happiness and wealth would 
assuredly be diminished in proportion to the degree in 
which jealousy and concealment became their social and 
economical principles. It would not, in the long run, 
bring good, but only evil, to the man of science, if, in- 
stead of telling openly where he had found good iron, he 
carefully concealed every new bed of it, that he might 
ask, in exchange for the rare ploughshare, more corn 
from the farmer, or, in exchange for the rude needle, 
more labour from the sempstress : and it would not ulti- 
mately bring good, but only evil, to the farmers, if they 
sought to burn each other's corn-stacks, that they might 
raise the value of their grain, or if the sempstresses tried 
to break each other's needles, that each might get all the 
stitching to herself. 

Now these laws of human a(?tion are precisely as au- 
thoritative in their application to the conduct of a million 
of men, as to that of six or twelve. All enmity, jealousy, 
opposition, and secrecy are wholly, and in all circum- 
stances, destructive in their nature — not productive ; 
and all kindness, fellowship, and communicativeness 
are invariably productive in their operation, — not de- 
structive ; and the evil principles of opposition and 
exclusiveness are not rendered less^ fatal, but more fatal, 
by their acceptance among large masses of men ; more 
fatal, I say, exactly in proportion as their influence is 
more secret. For though the opposition does always its 
own simple, necessary, direct quantity of harm, and 
withdraws always its own simple, necessary, measurable 



168 JOHN BUSKIN. 

quantity of wealth from the sum possessed by the com- 
munity, yet, in proportion to the size of the community, 
it does another and more refined mischief than this, by 
concealing its own fatality under aspects of mercantile 
complication and expediency, and giving rise to multi- 
tudes of false theories, based on a mean belief in narrow 
and immediate appearances of good done here and there 
by things which have the universal and everlasting 
nature of evil. So that the time and powers of the 
nation are wasted, not only in wretched struggling 
against each other, but in vain complaints, and ground- 
less discouragements, and empty investigations, and use- 
less experiments in laws, and elections, and inventions ; 
with hope always to pull wisdom through some new- 
shaped slit in a ballot-box, and to drag prosperity down 
out of the clouds along some new knot of electric wire ; 
while all the while Wisdom stands calling at the corners 
of the streets, and the blessing of Heaven waits ready to 
rain down upon us, deeper than the rivers and broader 
than the dew, if only we will obey the first plain princi- 
ples of humanity, and the first plain precepts of the 
skies: "Execute true judgment and show mercy and 
compassion every man to his brother ; and let none of 
you imagine evil against his brother in your heart." 

Therefore, I believe most firmly that as the laws of 
national prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and 
more cast our toil into social and communicative systems. 
— A Joy Forever, ii. 



FALLACIES. 169 



JUSTICE AND EQUALITY. 

This distinction between rich and poor rests on two 
bases. Within its proper limits, on a basis which is 
lawful and everlastingly necessary ; beyond them, on a 
basis unlawful, and everlastingly corrupting the frame- 
work of societ}^ The lawful basis of wealth is, that a 
man who works should be paid the fair value of his 
work ; and that if he does not choose to spend it to-day, 
he should have free leave to keep it, and spend it to- 
morrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, and 
laying by daily, attains at last the possession of an 
accumulated sum of wealth, to which he has absolute 
right. The idle person who will not work, and the 
wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of the 
same time will be doubly poor — poor in possession, and 
dissolute in moral habit ; and he will then naturally 
covet the money which the other has saved. And if he 
is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of his 
well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for 
saving, or any reward for good conduct ; and all society 
is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems of 
rapine. Therefore the first necessity of social life is 
the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the 
law — that he should keep who has justly earned. 

That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction 
between rich and poor. But there is also a false basis 
of distinction ; namely, the power held over those who 
are earning wealth by those who already possess it, and 
only use it to gain more. There will be always a 



170 JOHN BUSKIN. 

number of men who would fain set themselves to the 
accumulation of Avealth as the sole object of their lives. 
Necessarily, that class of men is an uneducated class, 
inferior in intellect, and more or less cowardly. It is 
physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, 
or brave man to make money the chief object of his 
thoughts ; just as it is for him to make his dinner the 
principal object of them. All healthy people like their 
dinners, but their dinner is not the main object of their 
lives. So all healthily minded people like making 
money — ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensation of 
winning it ; but the main object of their life is not 
money ; it is something better than money. . . . But in 
every nation, as I said, there are a vast class who are 
ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. And 
with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and 
the work- second, as with brave people the work is first, 
and the fee second. And this is no small distinction. 
It is between life and death in a man ; between heaven 
and hell for him. You cannot serve two masters ; — 
you must serve one or other. If your work is first with 
you, and your fee second, work is your master, and the 
lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with 
you, and your work is second, fee is your master, and 
the lord of fee, who is the Devil; and not only the 
Devil, but the lowest of devils — the ' least erected 
fiend that fell.' So there you have it in brief terms : 
Work first — you are God's servants; Fee first — you 
are the Fiend's. And it makes a difference, now and 
ever, believe me, whether you serve Him who has on 



FALLACIES. 171 

His vesture and thigh written, ^King of Kings,' and 
whose service is perfect freedom ; or him on whose vest- 
ure and thigh the name is written, 'Slave of Slaves,' 
and whose service is perfect slavery. 

However, in every nation there are, and must always 
be, a certain number of these Fiend's servants, who 
have it principally for the object of their lives to make 
money. They are always, as I said, more or less stupid, 
and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money. 
Stupidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain. We 
do great injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked 
above all common wickedness. He was only a common 
money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, didn't under- 
stand Christ ; — couldn't make out the worth of Him, 
or meaning of Him. He never thought He would be 
killed. He was horror-struck when he found that Christ 
would be killed ; threw his money away instantly, and 
hanged himself. How many of our present money- 
seekers, think you, would have the grace to hang them- 
selves, whoever was killed ? But Judas was a common, 
selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow ; his hand 
aiways in the bag of the poor, not caring for them. 
Helpless to understand Christ, he yet believed in Him, 
much more than most of us do ; had seen Him do mira- 
cles, thought He was quite strong enough to shift for 
Himself, and he, Judas, might as well make his own 
little bye-perquisites out of the affair. Christ would 
come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty 
pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker's idea all over 
the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but can't understand 



172 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Him — doesn't care for Him — sees no good in that 
benevolent business ; makes his own little job out of it at 
all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass 
of men, you have a certain number of bag-men — your 
'fee-first' men, whose main object is to make money. 
And they do make it — make it in all sorts of unfair 
ways, chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, 
or what is called the power of capital ; that is to say, 
the power which money, once obtained, has over the 
labour of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its 
produce to himself, except the labourer's food. That is 
the modern Judas's way of 'carrying the bag,' and 
' bearing what is put therein.' — The Crown of Wild 
Olive, sees. 31-33. 

As to the distribution of the hard work. None of us, 
or very few of us, do either hard or soft work because 
we think we ought ; but because we have chanced to fall 
into the way of it, and cannot help ourselves. Now, 
nobody does anything well that they cannot help doing : 
work is only done well when it is done with a will ; and 
no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he 
is doing what he should, and is in his place. And, 
depend upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a 
disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, 
soldierly, human way — a lawful or ' legal ' way. Men 
are enlisted for the labour that kills — the labour of war: 
they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for 
that. Let them be enlisted also for the labour that 
feeds : let them be counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised 



FALLACIES. 173 

for that. Teach the plough exercise as carefully as you 
do the sword exercise, and let the officers of troops of life 
be held as much gentlemen as the officers of troops of 
death ; and all is done : but neither this, nor any other 
right thing, can be accomplished — you can't even see 
your way to it — unless, first of all, both servant and 
master are resolved that, come what will of it, they will 
do each other justice. People are perpetually squabbling 
about what will be best to do, or easiest to do, or advisa- 
blest to do, or profitablest to do ; but they never, so far 
as I hear them talk, ever ask what it is just to do. And 
it is the law of heaven that 3^ou shall not be able to judge 
what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved to judge 
what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing con- 
stantly reiterated by our Master — the order of all others 
that is given oftenest — 'Do justice and judgment.' 
That's your Bible order ; that's the ' Service of God,' not 
praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed, to sing 
psalms when you are merry, and to pray, when you need 
anything ; and, by the perverseness of the evil spirit in 
us, we get to think that praying and psalm-singing are 
' service.' If a child finds itself in want of anything, it 
runs in and asks its father for it — does it call that doing 
its father a service ? If it begs for a to}^ or a piece of 
cake — does it call that serving its father ? That, with 
God, is prayer, and He likes to hear it : He likes you to 
ask him for cake when you want it ; but He doesn't call 
that ' serving Him.' Begging is not serving : God likes 
mere beggars as little as you do — He likes honest 
servants, not beggars. So when a child loves its father 



174 JOHN BUSKIN. 

very much, and is very happy, it may sing little songs 
about him ; but it doesn't call that, serving its father ; 
neither is singing songs about God, serving God. It is 
enjoying ourselves, if it's anything ; most probably it is 
nothing ; but if it's anything, it is serving ourselves, not 
God. And yet we are impudent enough to call our beg- 
gings and chauntings ' Divine Service : ' we say ' Divine 
service will be " performed " ' (that's our word — the form 
of it gone through) ' at so and so o'clock.' Alas ! — unless 
we perform Divine service in every willing act of life, 
we never perform it at all. The one Divine work — the 
one ordered sacrifice — is to do justice ; and it is the last 
we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that ! As 
much charity as you choose, but no j ustice. 'Nay,' 3- ou will 
say, 'charity is greater than justice.' Yes, it is greater, it is 
the summit of justice — it is the temple of which justice 
is the foundation. But you can't have the top without 
the bottom ; you cannot build upon charity. You must 
build upon justice, for this main reason, that you have 
not at first, charity to build with. It is the last reward 
of good work. Do justice to your brother (you can do 
that, whether you love him or not), and you will come 
to love him. But do injustice to him, because you don't 
love him ; and you will come to hate him. It is all very 
fine to think you can build upon charity to begin with ; 
but you will find all you have got to begin with, begins 
at home, and is essentially love of yourself. You well- 
to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night, will go 
to 'Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and tid}', and 
your little children will have their tight little Sunday 



FALLACIES. 175 

boots on, and lovely little Sunday featliers in their hats ; 
and you think complacently, and piously, how lovely 
they look going to church in their best ! So they do : 
and you love them heartily, and you like sticking feath- 
ers in their hats. That's all right : that is charity ; but 
it is charity beginning at home. Then you will come to 
the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up also, — it, in its 
Sunday dress, — the dirtiest rags it has, — that it may 
beg the better : you will give it a penny, and think how 
good you are, and how good God is to prefer your child to 
the crossing-sweeper, and to bestow on it a divine hat, 
feather, and boots, and the pleasure of giving pence, instead 
of begging for them. That's charity going abroad. But 
what does justice say, walking and watching near us ? 
Christian Justice has been strangely mute, and seemingly 
blind J and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a day : she 
keeps her accounts still, however — quite steadily — 
doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, 
and through acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific 
invention she cares about). You must put your ear 
down ever so close to her lips to hear her speak ; and 
then you will start at what she first whispers, for it will 
certainly be, ' Why shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper 
have a feather on its head, as well as your own 
child ? ' Then you may ask Justice, in an amazed man- 
ner, 'How she can possibly be so foolish as to think 
children could sweep crossings with feathers on their 
heads ? Then you stoop again, and Justice says — still 
in her dull, stupid way — ' Then, why don't you, every 
other Sunday, leave your child to sweep the crossing, and 



1T6 JOHN BUSKIN. 

take the little sweeper to church in a hat and feather ? ' 
Mercy on us (you think), what will she say next ! And 
you answer, of course, that ^you don't, because every- 
body ought to remain content in the position in which 
Providence has placed them.' Ah, my friends, that's the 
gist of the whole question. Did Providence put them 
in that position, or did you ? You knock a man into a 
ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the 
' position in which Providence has placed him.' That's 
modern Christianity. You say ' We did not knock him into 
the ditch.' We shall never know, what you have done, 
or left undone, until the question with us every morning 
is, not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do the just 
thing during the day, nor until we are at least so far 
on the way to being Christian, as to acknowledge that 
maxim of the poor half-way Mahometan, ' One hour in 
the execution of justice is worth seventy years of prayer.' 
— The Crown of Wild Olive, sees. 38-40. 

Now the establishment of inequality cannot be shown 
in the abstract to be either advantageous or disadvanta- 
geous to the body of the nation. The rash and absurd 
assumption that such inequalities are necessarily advan- 
tageous, lies at the root of most of the popular fallacies 
on the subject of political economy. For the eternal 
and inevitable law in this matter is, that the beneficial- 
ness of the inequality depends, first, on the methods by 
which it was accomplished, and, secondly, on the pur- 
poses to which it is applied. Inequalities of wealth, 
unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation 



FALLACIES. 177 

in which they exist during their establishment; and, 
unjustly directed, injure it yet more during their exist- 
ence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, 
benefit the nation in the course of their establishment ; 
and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence. 
That is to say, among every active and well-governed 
people, the various strength of individuals, tested by 
full exertion and specially applied to various need, 
issues in unequal, but harmonious results, receiving 
reward or authority according to its class and service ; 
while in the inactive or ill-governed nation, the grada- 
tions of decay and the victories of treason work out also 
their own rugged system of subjection and success ; and 
substitute, for the melodious inequalities of concurrent 
power, the iniquitous dominances and depressions of 
guilt and misfortune. — Unto This Last, ii. 



178 JOHN BUSKIN. 



PEOSPECT AND PEESENT DUTY. 

Men can neither drink steam, nor eat stone. The 
maximum of population on a given space of land implies 
also the relative maximum of edible vegetable, whether 
for men or cattle 5 it implies a maximum of pure air ; 
and of pure water. Therefore : a maximum of wood, to 
transmute the air, and of sloping ground, protected by 
herbage from the extreme heat of the sun, to feed the 
streams. All England may, if it so chooses, become 
one manufacturing town ; and Englishmen, sacrificing 
themselves to the good of general humanity, may live 
diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness, and 
of deadly exhalation. But the world cannot become a 
factory, nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever 
make iron digestible by the million, nor substitute 
hydrogen for wine. Neither the avarice nor the rage 
of men will ever feed them, and however the apple of 
Sodom and the grape of Gomorrah may spread their 
table for a time with dainties of ashes, and nectar of 
asps, — so long as men live by bread, the far-away 
valleys must laugh as they are covered with the gold of 
God, and the shouts of His happy multitudes ring round 
the wine-press and the well. 

Nor need our more sentimental economists fear the 
too wide spread of the formalities of a mechanical 
agriculture. The presence of a wise population implies 



PROSPECT AND PRESENT DUTY. 179 

the search for felicity as well as for food ; nor can any 
population reach its maximum but through that wisdom 
which " rejoices " in the habitable parts of the earth. 
The desert has its appointed place and work ; the eter- 
nal engine, whose beam is the earth's axle, whose beat 
is its year, and whose breath is its ocean, will still 
divide imperiously to their desert kingdoms, bound 
with unfurrowable rock, and swept by unarrested sand, 
their powers of frost and fire : but the zones and the 
lands between habitable, will be loveliest in habitation. 
The desire of the heart is also the light of the eyes. 
No scene is continually and untiringly loved, but one 
rich of joyful human labour : smooth in field ; fair in 
garden ; full in orchard ; trim, sweet, and frequent in 
homestead ; ringing with voices of vivid existence. No 
air is sweet that is silent; it is only sweet when full 
of low currents of under sound — triplets of birds, and 
murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned words of 
men, and wayward trebles of childhood. As the art of 
life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely 
things are also necessary : — the wild flower by the way- 
side, as well as the tended corn ; and the wild birds and 
creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle ; 
because man doth not live by bread only, but also by the 
desert manna ; by every wondrous word and unknow- 
able work of God. Happy, in that he knew them not, 
nor did his fathers know ; and that round about him 
reaches yet into the infinite, the amazement of his 
existence. 

Note, finally, that all effectual advancement towards 



180 JOHN BUSKIN. 

this true felicity of the human race must be by individ- 
ual, not public effort. Certain general measures may 
aid, certain revised laws guide, such advancement ; but 
the measure and law which have first to be determined 
are those of each man's home. . . . 

All true economy is ^ Law of the house.' Strive to 
make that law strict, simple, generous : waste nothing, 
and grudge nothing. Care in nowise to make more of 
money, but care to make much of it ; remembering 
always the great, palpable, inevitable fact — the rule 
and root of all economy — that what one person has, 
another cannot have ; and that every a,tom of substance, 
of whatever kind, used or consumed, is so much human 
life spent ; which, if it issue in the saving present life, 
or gaining more, is well spent, but if not, is either so 
much life prevented, or so much slain. In all buying, 
consider, first, what condition of existence you cause in 
the producers of what you buy ; secondly, whether the 
sum you have paid is just to the producer, and in due 
proportion, lodged in his hands ; thirdly, to how much 
clear use, for food, knowledge, or joy, this that you have 
bought can be put ; and fourthly, to whom and in what 
way it can be most speedily and serv'.ceably distributed : 
in all dealings whatsoever insisting on entire openness 
and stern fulfilment ; and in all doings, on perfection 
and loveliness of accomplishment ; especially on fineness 
and purity of all marketable commodity ; watching at 
the same time for all ways of gaining or teaching, 
powers of simple pleasure; and of showing "oaoj' Iv 
^acpoddXo) yef oj'ftw^"; the sum of enjoyment depending 



PBOSPECT AND PRESENT DUTY. 181 

not on the quantity of things tasted, but on the vivacity 
and patience of taste. 

And if, on due and honest thought over these things, 
it seems that the kind of existence to which men are 
now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, 
may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one ; 
— consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury 
would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our 
sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world. 
Luxury is indeed possible in the future — innocent and 
exquisite ; luxury for all, and by the help of all ; but 
luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant : 
the cruelcst man living could not sit at his feast, unless 
he sat blindfold. Eaise the veil boldly ; face the light ; 
and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be through 
tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go 
thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the 
time come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread 
and bequest of peace shall be Unto this last as unto 
thee ; and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the 
wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation 
than that of the narrow home, and calm economy, where 
the Wicked cease — not from trouble, but from troub- 
ling — and the Weary are at rest. — Unto This Last, iv. 



182 JOHN E USE IN. 



THE MEECHANT CHIVALRY. 

Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, appear rea- 
sonable (many writers have endeavoured to prove it un- 
reasonable) that a peaceable and rational person, whose 
trade is buying and selling, should be held in less honour 
than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose 
trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent of mankind 
has always, in spite of the philosophers, given precedence 
to the soldier. 

And this is right. 

For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not 
slaying, but being slain. This, without well knowing its 
own meaning, the world honours it for. A bravo's trade 
is slaying; but the world has never respected bravos 
more than merchants ; the reason it honours the soldier 
is, because he holds his life at the service of the State. 
Eeckless he may be — fond of pleasure or of adventure 
— all kinds of bye-motives and mean impulses may have 
determined the choice of his profession, and may affect, 
(to all appearance exclusively) his daily conduct in it ; 
but our estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact — of 
which we are well assured — that, put him in a fortress 
breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, 
and only death and his duty in front of him, he will keep 
his face to the front ; and he knows that this choice may 
be put to him at any moment, and has beforehand taken 



TEE MERCHANT CHIVALRY. 183 

his part — virtually takes such part continually — does, 
in reality, die daily. 

Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer and phy- 
sician, founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. What- 
ever the learning or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief 
respect for him depends on our belief that, set in a 
judge's seat, he will strive to judge justly, come of it 
what may. Could we suppose that he would take bribes, 
and use his acuteness and legal knowledge to give plau- 
sibility to iniquitous decisions, no degree of intellect 
would win for him our respect. Nothing will win it 
short of our tacit conviction, that in all important acts 
of his life, justice is first with him; his own interest, 
second. 

In the case of a physician, the ground of the honour 
we render him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we 
should shrink from him in horror if we found him regard 
his patients merely as subjects to experiment upon ; 
much more, if we found that, receiving bribes from per- 
sons interested in their deaths, he was using his best 
skill to give poison in the mask of medicine. 

Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as 
it respects clergymen. No goodness of disposition will 
excuse want of science in a physician or of shrewdness 
in an advocate ; but a clergyman, even though his power 
of intellect be small, is respected on the presumed ground 
of his unselfishness and serviceableness. 

Now there can be no question but that the tact, fore- 
sight, decision, and other mental powers, required for 
the successful management of a large mercantile concern, 



184 JOHN BUSKIN. 

if not such as could be compared with those of a great 
lawyer, general, or divine, would at least match the 
general conditions of mind required in the subordinate 
officers of a ship, or of a regiment, or in the curate of a 
country parish. If, therefore, all the efficient members of 
the so-called liberal professions are still, somehow, in pub- 
lic estimate of honour, preferred before the head of a 
commercial firm, the reason must lie deeper than in the 
measurement of their several powers of mind. 

And the essential reason for such preference will be 
found to lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed 
to act always selfishly. His work may be very necessary 
to the community : but the motive of it is understood to 
be wholly personal. The merchant's first object in all 
his dealings must be (the public believe) to get as much 
for himself, and leave as little to his neighbour (or cus- 
tomer) as possible. Enforcing this upon him, by political 
statute, as the necessary principle of his action ; recom- 
mending it to him on all occasions, and themselves re- 
ciprocally adopting it ; proclaiming vociferously, for law 
of the universe, that a buyer's function is to cheapen, 
and a seller's to cheat, — the public, nevertheless, in- 
voluntarily condemn the man of commerce for his com- 
pliance with their own statement, and stamp him for 
ever as belonging to an inferior grade of human per- 
sonality. 

This they will find, eventually, they m.ust give up 
doing. They must not cease to condemn selfishness ; 
but they will have to discover a kind of commerce which 
is not exclusively selfish. Or, rather, they will have to dis- 



THE MERCHANT CHIVALRY. 185 

cover that there never was, or can be, any other kind of 
commerce ; that this which they have called commerce was 
not commerce at all, but cozening ; and that a true mer- 
chant differs as much from a merchant according to laws 
of modern political economy, as the hero of the Excursion 
from Autolycus, They will find that commerce is an 
occupation which gentlemen will every day see more need 
to engage in, rather than in the businesses of talking 
to men, or slaying them ; that, in true commerce, as in 
true preaching or true fighting, it is necessary to admit 
the idea of occasional voluntary loss; — that sixpences 
have to be lost as well as lives, under a sense of 
duty ; that the market may have its martyrdoms as 
well as the pulpit ; and trade its heroisms as well as 
war. 

May have — in the final issue, must have — and only 
has not had yet, because men of heroic temper have 
always been misguided in their youth into other fields, 
not recognizing what is in our days, perhaps, the most 
important of all fields ; so that while many a zealous 
person loses his life in trying to teach the form of a 
gospel, very few will lose a hundred pounds in showing 
the practice of one. 

The fact is, that people never have had clearly ex- 
plained to them the true functions of a merchant with 
respect to other people. I should like the reader to be 
very clear about this. 

Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily 
necessities of life, have hitherto existed — three exist 
necessarily, in every civilized nation : 



186 JOHN BUSKIN. 

The Soldier's profession is to defend it. 

The Pastor's, to teach it. 

The Physician's, to Jceep it in health. 

The Lawyer's, to enforce justice in it. 

The Merchant's, to provide for it. 

And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to 
die for it. 

' On due occasion,' namely : — 

The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle. 

The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague. 

The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood. 

The Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice. 

The Merchant — What is his ' due occasion ' of 
death ? 

It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of 
us. For truly, the man who does not know when to die, 
does not know how to live. 

Observe, the merchant's function (or manufacturer's, 
for in the broad sense in which it is here used, the word 
must be understood to include both) is to provide for the 
nation. It is no more his function to get profit for him- 
self out of that provision than it is a clergyman's function 
to get his stipend. The stipend is a due and necessary 
adjunct, but not the object of his life, if he be a true 
clergyman, any more than his fee (or honorarium) is the 
object of life to a true physician. Neither is his fee 
the object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true 
men, have a work to be done irrespective of fee ^ to be 
done even at any cost, or, for quite the contrary of fee ; 
the pastor's function being to teach, the physician's to 



THE MERCHANT CHIVALRY. 187 

heal, and the merchant's, as I have said, to provide. 
That is to say, he has to understand to their very root 
the qualities of the thing he deals in, and the means of 
obtaining or producing it ; and he has to apply all his 
sagacity and energy to the producing or obtaining it in 
perfect state, and distributing it at the cheapest possible 
price where it is most needed. 

And because the production or obtaining of any com- 
modity involves necessarily the agency of many lives 
and hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his 
business the master and governor of large masses of men 
in a more direct, though less confessed way, than a 
military officer or pastor ; so that on him falls, in great 
part, the responsibility for the kind of life they lead : 
and it becomes his duty, not only to be always consider- 
ing how to produce what he sells in the purest and 
cheapest forms, but how to make the various employ- 
ments involved in the production, or transference of it, 
most beneficial to the men employed. 

And as into these two functions, requiring for their 

right exercise the highest intelligence, as well as patience, 

kindness, and tact, the merchant is bound to put all his 

energy, so for their just discharge he is bound, as soldier 

or physician is bound, to give up, if need be, his life, in 

such way as may be demanded of him. Two main points 

he has in his providing function to maintain : first, his 

engagements (faithfulness to engagements being the real 

root of all possibilities in commerce) ; and, secondly, the 

perfectness and purity of the thing provided; so that, 

rather than fail in any engagement, or consent to any 
f 



188 JOHN BUSKIN. 

deterioration, adulteration, or unjust and exorbitant price 
of that wMch he provides, he is bound to meet fearlessly 
any form of distress, poverty, or labour, which may, 
through maintenance of these points, come upon him. — 
Unto This Last, i. 



ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. 189 



ST. GEOEGE'S GUILD. 

THE CREED AND RESOLUTION. 

I. I TRUST in the Living God, Father Almighty, 
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things and 
creatures visible and invisible. 

I trust in the kindness of His law, and the goodness 
of His work. 

And I will strive to love Him, and keep His law, and 
see His work, while I live. 

II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the 
majesty of its faculties, the fulness of its mercy, and the 
joy of its love. 

And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, and, 
even when I cannot, will act as if I did. 

III. I will labour, with such strength and opportu- 
nity as God gives me, for my own daily bread ; and all 
that my hand finds to do, I will do with my might. 

IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any 
human being for my gain or pleasure ; nor hurt, or cause 
to be hurt, any human being for my gain or pleasure ; 
nor rob, or cause to be robbed, any human being for my 
gain or pleasure. 

Y. I will not kill nor hurt any living creature need- 
lessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to 
save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect 
all natural beauty, upon the earth. 



190 JOHN BUSKIN. 

VI. I will strive to raise my own body and soul daily 
into higher powers of duty and happiness ; not in rival- 
ship or contention with others, but for the help, delight, 
and honour of others, and for the joy and peace of my 
own life. 

VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faith- 
fully ; and the orders of its monarch, and of all persons 
appointed to be in authority under its monarch, so far 
as such laws or commands are consistent with what I 
suppose to be the law of God ; and when they are not, 
or seem in any wise to need change, I will oppose them 
loyally and deliberately, not with malicious, concealed, 
or disorderly violence. 

VIII. And with the same faithfulness, and under the 
limits of the same obedience, which I render to the laws 
of my country, and the commands of its rulers, I will 
obey the laws of the Society called of St. George, into 
which I am this day received ; and the orders of its 
masters, and of all persons appointed to be in authority 
under its masters, so long as I remain a Companion, 
called of St. George. — Fo7's Clavigera, letter Iv. 

THE PROMISE. 

1. To do your own work well, whether it be for life 
or death. 

2. To help other people at theirs, when you can, and 
to avenge no injury. 

3. To be sure you can obey good laws before you seek 
to alter bad ones. 



ST. GEOBGE'S GUILD. 191 



THE PROJECT. 

We will try to make some small piece of English 
ground beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have 
no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads ; we will have 
no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; none 
wretched, but the sick ; none idle, but the dead. We 
will have no liberty upon it ; but instant obedience to 
known law, and appointed persons : no equality upon it ; 
but recognition of every betterness that we can find, and 
reprobation of every worseness. When we want to go 
anywhere, we will go there quietly and safely, not at 
forty miles an hour in the risk of our lives ; when we 
want to carry anything anywhere, we will carry it either 
on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts, or in 
boats ; we will have plenty of flowers and vegetables in 
our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in our fields, — and 
few bricks. We will have some music and poetry ; the 
children shall learn to dance to it, and sing it ; perhaps 
some of the old people, in time, may also. We will have 
some art, moreover ; we will at least try if, like the 
Greeks, we can't make some pots. — Foy^s Clavigera, 
letter v. 

Whatever piece of land we begin work upon, we 
shall treat thoroughly at once, putting unlimited manual 
labor on it, until we have every foot of it under as strict 
care as a flower-garden : and the labourers shall be paid 
sufficient, unchanging wages ; and their children educated 
compulsorily in agricultural schools inland, and naval 



192 JOHN RUSKIJSr. 

schools by the sea, the indispensable first condition of 
such education being that the boys learn either to ride 
or to sail ; the girls to spin, weave, and sew, and at a 
proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely; the 
youth of both sexes to be disciplined daily in the strict- 
est practice of vocal music ; and for morality, to be 
taught gentleness to all brute creatures, — finished 
courtesy to each other, — to speak truth with rigid care, 
and to obey orders with the precision of slaves. Then, 
as they get older, they are to learn the natural history of 
the place they live in, — to know Latin, girls and boys 
both, — and the history of five cities ; Athens, Eome, 
Venice, Florence, and London. — Fors Clavigera, letter 
viii. 

In the history of the five cities I named, they shall 
learn, so far as they can understand, what has been 
beautifully and bravely done ; and they shall know the 
lives of the heroes and heroines in truth and natural- 
ness ; and shall be taught to remember the greatest of 
them on the days of their birth and death ; so that the 
year shall have its full calendar of reverent Memory. 
And, on every day, part of their morning service shall 
be a song in honour of the hero whose birthday it is ; 
and part of their evening service, a song of triumph for 
the fair death of one whose death-day it is : and in their 
first learning of notes they shall be taught the great 
purpose of music, which is to say a thing that you mean 
deeply, in the strongest and clearest possible way ; and 
they shall never be taught to sing what they don't mean. 



ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. 193 

They shall be able to sing merrily when they are happy, 
and earnestly when they are sad ; but they shall find no 
mirth in mockery, nor in obscenity ; neither shall they 
waste or profane their hearts with artificial and lascivi- 
ous sorrow. . . . 

To divert a little of the large current of English 
charity and justice from watching disease to guarding 
health, and from the punishment of crime to the reward 
of virtue ; to establish, here and there, exercise grounds 
instead of hospitals, and training-schools instead of peni- 
tentiaries, is not, if you will slowly take it to heart, a fran- 
tic imagination. — Foi's Clavigera, letter ix. 

The St. George's Company is to be a band of deliver- 
ing knights — not of churls needing deliverance ; of eager 
givers and servants — not of eager beggars and persons 
needing service. It is only the Kich and the Strong 
whom I receive for Companions, — those who come not 
to be ministered unto but to minister. Eich, yet some 
of them in other kind of riches than the world's ; strong, 
yet some in other than the Avorld's strength. But this 
much, at least, of literal strength and power they must 
have, — the power, and formed habit of self-support. 
— Fors Clavigera, letter Ixiii. 

It is the work of a world-wide monastery ; protesting 
by patient, not violent, deed, and fearless, yet hence- 
forward unpassionate, word, against the evil of this our 
day, till in its heat and force it be ended. 

Of which evil I here resume the entire assertion made 
in Fors, up to this time, in few words. 



194 JOHN BUSKIN. 

All social evils and religious errors arise out of the 
pillage of the labourer by the idler : the idler leaving 
him only enough to live on (and even that miserably), 
and taking all the rest of the produce of his work to 
spend in his own luxury, or in the toys with which he 
beguiles his idleness. 

And this is done, and has from time immemorial been 
done, in all so-called civilized, but in reality corrupted, 
countries, — first by the landlords ; then, under their 
direction, by the three chief, so-called gentlemanly " pro- 
fessions," of soldier, lawyer, and priest; and lastly by 
the merchant and usurer. . . . All this has to cease in- 
evitably and totally. Peace, Justice, and the Word of 
God must be given to the people, not sold. And these 
ca7i only be given by a true Hierarchy and Eoyalty, 
beginning at the throne of God, and descending, by 
sacred stair, let down from heaven, to bless and keep all 
the Holy creatures of God, man and beast, and to con- 
demn and destroy the unholy. And in this Hierarchy 
and Eoyalty all the servants of God have part, being 
made priests and kings to Him, That they may feed 
His people with food of angels and food of men ; teach- 
ing the word of God with power, and breaking and pour- 
ing the Sacrament of Bread and Wine from house to 
house, in remembrance of Christ, and with gladness and 
singleness of heart ; the priest's function at the altar and 
in the tabernacle, at one end of the village, being only 
holy in the fulfilment of the deacon's function at the 
table, and in the taberna, at the other. 

And so, out of the true earthly kingdom, in fulness of 



ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. 195 

time, shall come the heavenly kingdom, when the taber- 
nacle of God shall be with men ; no priest needed more 
for ministry, because all the earth will be temple ; nor 
bread nor wine needed more for mortal food, or fading 
memory, but the water of life given to him that is 
athirst, and the fruits of the trees of healing. — Foi^s 
Clavigera, letter Ixxxiv. 



RUSKIN THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 



This is the thing which I know — and which, if you labour faith- 
fully, you shall know also, — that in Reverence is the chief joy and 
power of life ; — Reverence, for what is pure and bright in your own 
youth ; for what is true and tried in the age of others : for all that is 
gracious among the living, great among the dead, — and marvellous 
in the Powers that cannot die. — Lectures on Art. 

PKELUDE. 

We have seen the same great Faith pervading all the phases 
of the work of Ruskin. In Nature, he beholds the vision of a 
Spirit that creates and controls all beauty : in Art, he pleads 
for the self-expression of the soul as the source of all noble- 
ness and truth : in Sociology, he reiterates with earnestness 
unflinching the necessity of the moral law. Thus life is to him 
one harmonious unity: the worship of man inspired by the 
Spirit of God. He has never shrunk from proclaiming un- 
popular truths : and the truths to which his nature most deeply 
responds are unpopular in our generation. In an age that 
prides itself upon independence, he has proclaimed the neces- 
sity of faithful obedience ; at a time when the thoughts of men 
were wonderingly arrested b}" the vast sweep of mechanical 
law, he has proclaimed the vaster sweep of life. Always, in 
his direct moral teachings, we find him fearlessly practical. 
He deals little with theological speculations : to questions of 
creeds he opposes the answer of silence. He pleads with 
stress of spirit for actual work, as the one salvation for body 



nUSKIN THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 197 

and for soul ; and with stern assurance he throws on our piti- 
ful achievement the relentless light of our professed convic- 
tion. Yet, in spite of all the evil that he mourns with the 
fervor of a Hebrew prophet, he never falters in his belief that 
human life is meant to be a thing of grace and joy, No taint 
of asceticism is upon him ; no touch of morbid craving for sacri- 
fice. Delight in the works of God is to his thought the true 
destiny of man. 

Not without struggle has Ruskin kept his vision clear. 
Doubt was not native to him, yet upon him too was it forced 
in bewildered days. But the struggle had meant victory. 
Despite his reticence, there- can be no doubt concerning his 
own essential attitude. In his earliest and his latest books 
alike he shows a high serenity of sj^iritual sight. We may say 
of him in the noble words which, belonging first to BroAvning, 
belong also to every race-seer, from Homer to Carlyle, — 
" He at least believed in Soul, he was very sure of God." 



198 JOHN BUSKIN. 



THE DAY OF LIFE. 

Supposing it were told any of you by a physician 
whose word you could not but trust, that you had not 
more than seven days to live. And suppose also that, 
by the manner of your education it had happened to 
you, as it has happened to many, never to have heard 
of any future state, or not to have credited what you 
heard ; and therefore that you had to face this fact of 
the approach of death in its simplicity ; fearing no 
punishment for any sin that you might have before 
committed, or in the coDiing days might determine to 
commit; and having similarly no hope of reward for 
past, or yet possible, virtue ; nor even of any conscious- 
ness whatever to be left to you, after the seventh day 
had ended, either of the results of your acts, to those 
whom you loved, or of the feelings of any survivors 
towards you. Then the manner in which you would 
spend the seven days is an exact measure of the moral- 
ity of your nature. 

I know that some of you, and I believe the greater 
number of you, would, in such a case, spend the granted 
days entirely as you ought. Neither in numbering the 
errors, or deploring the pleasures of the past; nor in 
grasping at vile good in the present, nor vainly lament- 
ing the darkness of the future ; but in instant and ear- 
nest execution of whatever it might be possible for you 



THE DAY OF LIFE. 199 

to accomplisli in the time, in setting your affairs in 
order, and in providing for the future comfort, and — 
so far as you might by any message or record of your- 
self, for the consolation — of those whom you loved, 
and by whom you desired to be remembered, not for 
your good, but for theirs. How far you might fail 
through human weakness, in shame for the past, despair 
at the little that could in the remnant of life be accom- 
plished, or the intolerable pain of broken affection, 
would depend wholly on the degree in which your 
nature has been depressed or fortified by the manner of 
your past life. But I think there are few of you who 
would not S]3end those last days better than all that had 
preceded them. 

If you look accurately through the records of the 
lives that have been most useful to humanity, you will 
find that all that has been done best, has been done so ; 
— that to the clearest intellects and highest souls, — to 
the true children of the Father, with whom a thousand 
years are as one day, their poor seventy years are but as 
seven days. The removal of the shadow of death from 
them to an uncertain, but always narrow, distance, 
never takes away from them their intuition of its 
approach ; the extending to them of a few hours more 
or less of light abates not their acknowledgment of the 
infinitude that must be known to remain beyond their 
knowledge, — done beyond their deeds : the unprofitable- 
ness of their momentary service is wrought in a magnifi- 
cent despair, and their very honour is bequeathed by 
them for the joy of others, as they lie down to their 



200 JOHN BUSKIN. 

rest, regarding for themselves the voice of men no 
more. 

The best things, I repeat to you, have been done thus, 
and therefore, sorrowfully. But the greatest part of 
the good work of the world is done either in pure and 
unvexed instinct of duty, ^I have stubbed Thornaby 
waste,' or else, and better, it is cheerful and helpful 
doing of what the hand finds to do, in surety that at 
evening time, whatsoever is right the Master will give. 
And that it be worthily done, depends wholly on that 
ultimate quantity of worth which you can measure, each 
in himself, by the test I have just given you. For that 
test, observe, will mark to you the precise force, first of 
your absolute courage, and then of the energy in you for 
the right ordering of things, and the kindly dealing 
with persons. You have cut away from these two 
instincts every selfish or common motive, and left noth- 
ing but the energies of Order and of Love. 

Now, where those two roots are set, all the other 
powers and desires find right nourishment, and become 
to their own utmost, helpful to others, and pleasurable 
to ourselves. And so far as those two springs of action 
are not in us, all other powers become corrupt or dead ; 
even the love of truth, apart from these, hardens into an 
insolent and cold avarice of knowledge, which, unused, 
is more vain than unused gold. 

These, then, are the two essential instincts of human- 
ity : the love of Order and the love of Kindness. By 
the love of order the moral energy is to deal with the 
earth and to dress it, and keep it ; and with all rebel- 



THE DAT OF LIFE. 201 

lious and dissolute forces in lower creatures, or in our- 
selves. By the love of doing kindness, it is to deal 
rightly with all surrounding life. And then, grafted on 
these, we are to make every other passion perfect ; so 
that they may every one have full strength and yet be 
absolutely under control. 

Every one must be strong, every one perfect, every 
one obedient as a war horse. And it is among the 
most beautiful pieces of mysticism to which eternal 
truth is attached, that the chariot race, which Plato uses 
as an image of moral government, and which is indeed 
the most perfect type of it in any visible skill of men, 
should have been made by the Greeks the continual 
subject of their best poetry and best art. Nevertheless, 
Plato's use of it is not altogether true. There is no 
black horse in the chariot of the soul. One of the 
driver's worst faults is in starving his horses ; another, 
in not breaking them early enough ; but they are all 
good. Take, for example, one usually thought of as 
wholly evil — that of Anger, leading to vengeance. I 
believe it to be quite one of the crowning wickednesses 
of this age that we have starved and chilled our faculty 
of indignation, and neither desire nor dare to punish 
crimes justly. 

All true justice is vindictive to vice as it is rewarding 
to virtue. Only — and herein it is distinguished from 
personal revenge — it is vindictive of the wrong done, 
not of the wrong done to us. It is the national expres- 
sion of deliberate anger, as of deliberate gratitude ; it is 
not exemplary, or even corrective, but essentially retrib- 



202 JOHN BUSKIN. 

ntive; it is the absolute art of measured recompense, 
giving honour where honour is due, and shame where 
shame is due, and joy where joy is due, and pain where 
pain is due. . . . But in this, as in all other instances, 
the Tightness of the secondary passion depends on its 
being grafted on those two primary instincts, the love 
of order and of kindness, so that indignation itself is 
against the wounding of love. Do you think the firivig 
'^/tArjog came of a hard heart in Achilles, or the 'Fallas 
te hoc vuhiere, Pallas,^ of a hard heart in Anchises' son ? 
And now, if with this clew through the labyrinth of 
them, you remember the course of the arts of great 
nations, you will perceive that whatever has prospered, 
and become lovely, had its beginning — for no other 
was possible — in the love of order in material things, 
associated with true dUaioavfr], and the desire of beauty 
in material things, which is associated with true affec- 
tion, charitas ; and with the innumerable conditions of 
true gentleness expressed by the different uses of the 
words x'^Q^'i and gratia. You will find that this love of 
beauty is an essential part of all healthy human nature, 
and though it can long co-exist with states of life in 
many other respects unvirtuous, it is itself wholly good ; 
— the direct adversary of envy, avarice, mean worldly 
care, and especially of cruelty. It entirely perishes 
when these are wilfully indulged ; and the men in 
whom it has been most strong have always been com- 
passionate, and lovers of justice, and the earliest 
discerners and declarers of things conducive to the 
happiness of mankind. . . . 



THE DAY OF LIFE. 203 

You will find further, that as of love, so of all the 
other passions, the right government and exaltation be- 
gins in that of the Imagination, which is lord over them. 
For to subdue the passions, which is thought so often to 
be the sum of duty respecting them, is possible enough 
to a proud dulness ; but to excite them rightly, and 
make them strong for good, is the work of the unselfish 
imagination. It is constantly said that human nature 
is heartless. Do not believe it. Human nature is kind 
and generous ; but it is narrow and blind ; and can only 
with difficulty conceive anything but what it imme- 
diately sees and feels. People would instantly care 
for others as well as themselves if only they could 
imagine others as well as themselves. Let a child fall 
into the river before the roughest man's eyes ; — he will 
usually do what he can to get it out, even at some risk 
to himself: and all the town will triumph in the saving 
of one little life. Let the same man be shown that 
hundreds of children are dying of fever for want of 
some sanitary measure which it will cost him trouble to 
urge, and he will make no effort ; and probably all the 
town would resist him if he did. So, also, the lives of 
many deserving women are passed in a succession of 
petty anxieties about themselves, and gleaning of minute 
interests and mean pleasures in their immediate circle, 
because they are never taught to make any effort to 
look beyond it ; or to know anything about the mighty 
world in which their lives are fading, like blades of 
bitter grass in fruitless fields. . . . 

I press to the conclusion which I wish to leave with 



204 JOHN BUSKIN. 

you, that all you can rightly do, or honourably become, 
depends on the government of these two instincts of 
order and kindness, by this great Imaginative faculty, 
which gives you inheritance of the past, grasp of the 
present, authority over the future. Map out the spaces 
of your possible lives by its help ; measure the range of 
their possible agency ! On the walls and towers of this 
your fair city, there is not an ornament of which the 
first origin may not be traced back to the thoughts of 
men who died two thousand years ago. Whom will you 
be governing by your thoughts, two thousand years 
hence ? Think of it, and you will find that so far from 
art being immoral, little except art is moral; that life 
without industry is guilt, and industry without art is 
brutality ; and for the words ^ good ' and ^ wicked ' used 
of men, you may almost substitute the words ' Makers ' 
or ' Destroyers.' Far the greater part of the seeming 
prosperity of the world is, so far as our present knowl- 
edge extends, vain : wholly useless for any kind of 
good, but having assigned to it a certain inevitable 
sequence of destruction and of sorrow. Its stress is 
only the stress of wandering storm; its beauty, the 
hectic of plague : and what is called the history of man- 
kind is too often the record of the whirlwind, and the 
map of the spreading of the leprosy. But underneath all 
that, or in narrow spaces of dominion in the midst of it, 
the work of every man ' qui non accepit in vanitatem 
animam suam^ endures and prospers ; a small remnant 
or green bud of it prevailing at last over evil. And 
though faint with sickness, and encumbered in ruin, 



THE DAY OF LIFE. 205 

the true workers redeem inch by inch the wilderness 
into garden ground ; by the help of their joined hands, 
the order of all things is surely sustained and vitally 
expanded, and although with strange vacillation, in the 
eyes of the watcher, the morning cometh, and also the 
night, there is no hour of human existence that does not 
draw on towards the perfect day. 

And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men 
understood that the beauty of Holiness must be in 
labour as well as in rest. Nay ! moi^e, if it may be, in 
labour ; in our strength, rather than in our weakness ; 
and in the choice of what we shall work for through the 
six days, and may know to be good at their evening 
time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the 
seventh, of reward or repose. With the multitude that 
keep holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have 
gone up to the house of the Lord, and vainly there asked 
for what we fancied would be mercy ; but for the few 
who labour as their Lord would have them, the mercy 
needs no seeking, and their wide home no hallowing. 
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow them all the 
days of their life ; and they shall dwell in the house of 
the Lord — forever. — Lectures on Art, sees. 83-96. 



206 JOHN BUSKIN. 



KNOWLEDGE AND SPIEIT. 

Yet, observe, I do not mean to speak of the body and 
soul as separable. The man is made up of both : they 
are to be raised and glorified together, and all art is an 
expression of one, by and through the other. All that I 
would insist upon, is, the necessity of the whole man 
being in his work ; the body must be in it. Hands and 
habits must be in it, whether we will or not ; but the 
nobler part of the man may often not be in it. And 
that nobler part acts principally in love, reverence, and 
admiration, together with those conditions of thought 
which arise out of them. For we usually fall into much 
error by considering the intellectual powers as having 
dignity in themselves, and separable from the heart ; 
whereas the truth is, that the intellect becomes noble 
and ignoble according to the food we give it, and the 
kind of subjects with which it is conversant. It is not 
the reasoning power which, of itself, is noble, but the 
reasoning power occupied with its proper objects. Half 
of the mistakes of metaphysicians have arisen from their 
not observing this; namely, that the intellect, going 
through the same process, is yet mean or noble accord- 
ing to the matter it deals with, and wastes itself away 
in mere rotary motion, if it be set to grind straws and 
dust. If we reason only respecting words, or lines, or 
any trifling and finite things, the reason becomes a con- 



KNOWLEDGE AND SPIRIT. 207 

temptible faculty ; but reason employed on holy and 
infinite things, becomes herself holy and infinite. . . . 
For it must be felt at once that the increase of knowl- 
edge, merely as such, does not make the soul larger or 
smaller; that, in the sight of God, all the knowledge 
man can gain is as nothing, but that the soul, ... be it 
ignorant or be it wise, is all in all, and in the activity, 
strength, health, and well-being of this soul, lies the main 
difference, in His sight, between one man and another. 
And that which is all in all in God's estimate is also, be 
assured, all in all in man's labour, and to have the heart 
open, and the eyes clear, and the emotions and thoughts 
warm and quick, and not the knowing of this or the 
other fact, is the state needed for all mighty doing in 
this world. And therefore, finally, for this the weighti- 
est of all reasons, let us take no pride in our knowledge. 
We may, in a certain sense, be proud of being immortal ; 
we may be proud of being God's children ; we may be 
proud of loving, thinking, seeing, and of all that we are 
by no human teaching : but not of what we have been 
taught by rote ; not of the ballast and freight of the ship 
of the spirit, but only of its pilotage, without which all 
the freight will only sink it faster, and strew the sea 
more richly with its ruin. There is not at this moment 
a youth of twenty, having received what we moderns 
ridiculously call education, but he knows more of every- 
thing, except the soul, than Plato or St. Paul did ; but 
he is not for that reason a greater man, or fitter for his 
work, or more fit to be heard by others, than Plato or St. 
Paul. — Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. iv. 



208 JOHN BUSKIN. 



LIBERTY AND OBEDIENCE. 

It is true that there are liberties and liberties. Yon- 
der torrent, crystal-clear, and arrow-swift, with its spray 
leaping into the air like white troops of fawns, is free 
enough. Lost, presently, amidst bankless, boundless 
marsh — soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, hither 
and thither, listless, among the poisonous reeds and 
unresisting slime — it is free also. We may choose 
which liberty we like, — the restraint of voiceful rock, 
or the dumb and edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of 
that evil liberty, which men are now glorifying, and pro- 
claiming as essence of gospel to all the earth, and will 
presently, I suppose, proclaim also to the stars, with 
invitation to them out of their courses, — and of its op- 
posite continence, which is the clasp and /gvasTj neQovrj 
of Aglaia's cestus, we must try to find out something 
true. For no quality of Art has been more powerful in 
its influence on public mind ; none is more frequently 
the subject of popular praise, or the end of vulgar effort, 
than what we call ' Freedom.' It is necessary to deter- 
mine the justice or injustice of this popular praise. 

I said, a little while ago, that the practical teaching 
of the masters of Art was summed by the of Giotto. 
^You may judge my masterhood of craft,' Giotto tells 
us, ^by seeing that I can draw a circle unerringly.' 
And we may safely believe him, understanding him to 



LIBERTY AND OBEDIENCE. 209 

mean, that — -though more may be necessary to an artist 
than such a power — at least this power is necessary. 
The qualities of hand and eye needful to do this are the 
first conditions of artistic craft. 

Try to draw a circle yourself with the " free " hand, 
and with a single line. You cannot do it if your 
hand trembles, nor if it hesitates, nor if it is unmanage- 
able, nor if it is in the common sense of the word " free." 
So far from being free, it must be under a control as 
absolute and accurate as if it were fastened to an in- 
flexible bar of steel. And yet it must move, under this 
necessary control, with perfect, untormented serenity of 
ease. 

That is the condition of all good work whatsoever. 
All freedom is error. Every line you lay down is either 
right or wrong : it may be timidly and awkwardly wrong, 
or fearlessly and impudently wrong : the aspect of the 
impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons ; 
and what is commonly called ' free ' execution : the 
timid, tottering, hesitating wrongness is rarely so attract- 
ive ; yet sometimes, if accompanied with good qualities, 
and right aims in other directions, it becomes in a man- 
ner charming, like the inarticulateness of a child : but, 
whatever the charm or manner of the error, there is but 
one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line 
you draw. Is it right or wrong ? If right, it most as- 
suredly is not a ' free ' line, but an intensely continent, 
restrained, and considered line ; and the action of the 
hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as 'free,' 
as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision. 



210 JOHN BUSKIN. 

A great operator told me that his hand could check itself 
within about the two-hundredth of an inch, in penetrat- 
ing a membrane ; and this, of course, without the help of 
sight, by sensation only. With help of sight, and in 
action on a substance which does not quiver nor yield, a 
fine artist's line is measurable in its proposed direction 
to considerably less than the thousandth of an inch. 

A wide freedom, truly ! . . . 

I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a per- 
fectly free creature than in the common house fly. Nor 
free only, but brave ; and irreverent to a degree which I 
think no human republican could by any philosophy 
exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him ; he does 
not care whether it is king or clown whom he teases ; 
and in every step of his swift mechanical march, and in 
every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and 
the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independ- 
ence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's 
having been made for flies. Strike at him with your 
hand; and to him, the mechanical fact and external 
aspect of the matter is, what to you it would be, if an 
acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the 
ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air 
for a second, and came crashing down with an aim. That 
is the external aspect of it ; the inner aspect, to his fly's 
mind, is of quite natural and unimportant occurrence — 
one of the momentary conditions of his active life. He 
steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the 
back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor 
persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own posi- 



LIBERTY AND OBEDIENCE. 211 

tive opinion on all matters ; not an unwise one, usually, 
for his own ends ; and will ask no advice of yours. He 
has no work to do — no tyrannical instinct to obey. The 
earthworm has his digging ; the bee, her gathering and 
building ; the spider, her cunning net-work ; the ant, her 
treasury and accounts. All these are comparative slaves, 
or people of vulgar business. But your fly, free in the 
air, free in the chamber — a black incarnation of caprice 
— wandering, investigating, flitting, flirting, feasting at 
his will, with rich variety of choice in feast, from the 
heaped sweets in the grocer's window to those of the 
butcher's back-yard, and from the galled place on your 
cab-horse's back to the brown spot in the road, from 
which as the hoof disturbs him, he rises with angry 
republican buzz — what freedom is like his ? 

For captivity again, perhaps your poor watch-dog is as 
sorrowful a type as you will easily find. Mine certainly 
is. The day is lovely, but I must write this, and cannot 
go out with him. He is chained in the yard, because I 
do not like dogs in rooms, and the gardener does not like 
dogs in gardens. He has no books, — nothing but his 
own weary thoughts for company, and a group of those 
free flies, whom he snaps at, with sullen ill success. Such 
dim hope as he may have that I may yet take him out 
with me, will be, hour by hour, wearily disappointed ; or, 
worse, darkened at once into a leaden despair by an 
authoritative ^ No ' — too well understood. His fidelity 
only seals his fate ; if he would not watch for me, he 
would be sent away, and go hunting with some happier 
master : but he watches, and is wise, and faithful, and 



212 JOHN BUSKIN. 

miserable : and his high animal intellect only gives him 
the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and desire, 
and affection, which embitter his captivity ! Yet of the 
two, would we rather be watch-dog, or fly ? 

Indeed, the first point we have all to determine is not 
how free we are, but what kind of creatures we are. It 
is of small importance to any of us whether we get 
liberty ; but of the greatest that we deserve it. Whether 
we can win it, fate must determine ; but that we may be 
worthy of it, we may ourselves determine ; and the sor- 
rowfullest fate, of all that we can suffer, is to have it, 
without deserving it. 

I have hardly patience to hold my pen and go on writ- 
ing, as I remember (I would that it were possible for a 
few consecutive instants to forget) the infinite follies of 
modern thought in this matter, centred in the notion 
that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use 
he is likely to make of it. Folly unfathomable ! unspeak- 
able ! unendurable to look in the full face of, as the laugh 
of a cretin. You will send your child, will you, into a 
room where the table is loaded with sweet wine and 
fruit — some poisoned, some not ? — you will say to him, 
^' Choose freely, my little child ! It is so good for you 
to have freedom of choice: it forms your character — 
your individuality ! If you take the wrong cup, or the 
wrong berry, you will die before the day is over, but you 
will have acquired the dignity of a Free child " ? 

You think that puts the case too sharply ? I tell you, 
lover of liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but it 
is similarly between life and death. There is no act, nor 



LIBERTY AND OBEDIENCE. 213 

option of act, possible, but the wrong deed or option has 
poison in it which will stay in your veins thereafter for- 
ever. Never more to all eternity can you be as you 
might have been, had you not done that — chosen that. 
You have ' formed your character,' forsooth ! No ; if 
you have chosen ill, you have De-formed it, and that for- 
ever ! In some choices, it had been better for you that 
a red-hot iron bar had struck you aside, scarred and 
helpless, than that you had so chosen. ' You will know 
better next time ! ' No. Next time will never come. 
Next time the choice will be in quite another aspect — 
between quite different things, — you, weaker than you 
were by the evil into which you have fallen ; it, more 
doubtful than it was, by the increased dimness of your 
sight. No one ever gets wiser by doing wrong, iTor 
stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only by doing 
right, whether forced or not ; the prime, the one need is 
to do that, under whatever compulsion, until you can do 
it without compulsion. And then you are a Man. 

^ What ! ' a wayward youth might perhaps answer, in- 
credulously ; ^ no one ever gets wiser b}^ doing wrong ? 
Shall I not know the world best by trying the wrong of 
it, and repenting ? Have I not, even as it is, learned much 
by many of my errors ? ' Indeed, the effort by which 
partially you recovered yourself was precious ; that part 
of your thought by which you discerned the error was 
precious. What wisdom and strength you kept, and 
rightly used, are rewarded ; and in the pain and the 
repentance, and in the acquaintance with the aspects of 
folly and sin, you have learned something ; how much less 



214 JOHN BUSKIN. 

than you would have learned in right paths, can never 
be told, but that it is less is certain. Your liberty of 
choice has simply destroyed for you so much life and 
strength, never regainable. It is true you now know 
the habits of swine, and the taste of husks : do you 
think your father could not have taught you to know 
better habits and pleasanter tastes, if you had stayed in 
his house ; and that the knowledge you have lost would 
not have been more, as well as sweeter, than that you 
have gained ? But ' it so forms my individuality to be 
free ! ' Your individuality was given you by God, and 
in your race ; and if you have any to speak of, you will 
want no liberty. You will want a den to work in, and 
peace, and light — no more, — in absolute need ; if more 
in any wise, it will still not be liberty, but direction, 
instruction, reproof, and sympathy. But if you have no 
individuality, if there is no true character nor true desire 
in you, then you will indeed want to be free. You will 
begin early; and, as a boy, desire to be a man; and, as a 
man, think yourself as good as every other. You will 
choose freely to eat, freely to drink, freely to stagger 
and fall, freely, at last, to curse yourself and die. Death 
is the only real freedom possible to us : and that is con- 
summate freedom, — permission for every particle in the 
rotting body to leave its neighbour particle, and shift for 
itself. You call it "corruption" in the flesh; but before 
it comes to that, all liberty is an equal corruption in 
mind. You ask for freedom of thought ; but if you have 
not sufficient grounds for thought, you have no business 
to think ; and if you have sufficient grounds, you have 



LIBERTY AND OBEDIENCE. 215 

no^usiness to think wrong. Only one thought is possi- 
ble to youj if you are wise — your liberty is geometri- 
cally proportionate to your folly. 

' But all this glory and activity of our age ; what are 
they owing to. but to our freedom of thought ? ' In a 
measure, they are oAving — what good is in them — to 
the discovery of many lies, and the escape from the 
power of evil. Not to liberty, but to the deliverance 
from evil or cruel masters. Brave men have dared to 
examine lies which had long been taught, not because 
they wereyree-thinkers, but because they were such stern 
and close thinkers that the lie could no longer escape 
them. Of course the restriction of thought, or of its 
expression, by persecution, is merely a form of violence, 
justifiable or not, as other violence is, according to the 
character of the persons against whom it is exercised, 
and the divine and eternal laws which it vindicates or 
violates. We must not burn a man alive for saying that 
the Athanasian creed is ungrammatical, nor stop a bish- 
op's salary because we are getting the worst of an argu- 
ment with him ; neither must we let drunken men howl 
in the public streets at night. There is much that is 
true in the part of Mr. Mill's essay on Liberty which 
treats of freedom of thought ; some important truths are 
there beautifully expressed, but many, quite vital, are 
omitted ; and the balance, therefore, is wrongly struck. 
The liberty of expression, with a great nation, would 
become like that in a well-educated company, in which 
there is indeed freedom of speech, but not of clamour ; or 
like that in an orderly senate, in which men who deserve 



216 JOHN BUSKIN. 

to be heard, are heard in due time, and under deterimned 
restrictions. The degree of liberty you can rightly 
grant to a number of men is in the inverse ratio of 
their desire for it ; and a general hush, or call to order, 
would be often very desirable in this England of ours. 
For the rest, of any good or evil extant, it is impossible 
to say what measure is owing to restraint, and what to 
licence, where the right is balanced between them. . . . 

In fine, the arguments for liberty may in general be 
summed in a few very simple forms as follows : — 

Misguiding is mischievous : therefore, guiding is. 

If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch : 
therefore, nobody should lead anybody. 

Lambs and fawns should be left free in the fields; 
much more bears and wolves. 

If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may fire in 
any direction he pleases. 

A fence across a road is inconvenient ; much more, one 
at the side of it. 

Babes should not be swaddled with their hands bound 
down at their sides : therefore, they should be thrown out 
to roll in the kennels naked. 

None of these arguments are good, and the practical 
issues of them are worse. For there are certain eternal 
laws for human conduct which are quite clearly discerni- 
ble by human reason. So far as these are discovered 
and obeyed, by Avhatever machinery or authority the obe- 
dience is procured, there follow life and strength. So 
far as they are disobeyed, by whatever good intention 
the disobedience is brought about, there follow ruin and 



LIBERTY AND OBEDIENCE. 217 

sorrow. And the first duty of every man in the world 
is to find his true master, and, for his own good, submit 
to him ; and to find his true inferior, and, for that in- 
ferior's good, conquer him. The punishment is sure, if 
we either refuse the reverence, or are too cowardly and 
indolent to enforce the compulsion. A base nation cru- 
cifies or poisons its wise men, and lets its fools rave and 
rot in its streets. A wise nation obeys the one, restrains 
the other, and cherishes all. — The Queen of the Air, sees. 
143-156. 

Wise laws and just restraints are to a noble nation 
not chains, but chain mail — strength and defence, 
though something, also, of an incumbrance. And this 
necessity of restraint, remember, is just as honourable 
to man as the necessity of labour. You hear every day 
greater numbers of foolish people speaking about liberty, 
as if it were such an honourable thing; so far from 
being that, it is, on the whole, and in the broadest sense, 
dishonourable, and an attribute of the lower creatures. 
No human being, however great or powerful, was ever 
so free as a fish. There is always something that he 
must, or must not do ; while the fish may do whatever 
he likes. All the kingdoms of the world put together 
are not half so large as the sea, and all the railroads and 
wheels that ever were, or will be, invented are not 
so easy as fins. You will find, on fairly thinking of it, 
that it is his Eestraint which is honourable to man, not 
his Liberty ; and, what is more, it is restraint which is 
honourable even in the lower animals. A butterfly is 



218 JOHN BUSKIN. 

much more free than a bee ; but you honour the bee 
more, just because it is subject to certain laws which fit 
it for orderly function in bee society. And throughout 
the world, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, 
restraint is always the more honourable. It is true, in- 
deed, that in these and all other matters you never can 
reason finally from the abstraction, for both liberty and 
restraint are good when they are nobly chosen, and both 
are bad when they are basely chosen ; but of the two, I 
repeat, it is restraint which characterizes the higher 
creature, and betters the lower creature : and, from the 
ministering of the archangel to the labour of the insect, 
— from the poising of the planets to the gravitation of 
a grain of dust, — the power and glory of all creatures, 
and all matter, consist in their obedience, not in their 
freedom. The Sun has no liberty — a dead leaf has much. 
The dust of which you are formed has no liberty. Its 
liberty will come — with its corruption. — The Two 
Paths, sec. 192. 



APHOBISMS. 219 



APHORISMS. 

In these days you liave to guard against the fatallest 
darkness of the two opposite Prides — the Pride of 
Faith, which imagines that the Nature of the Deity can 
be defined by its convictions ; and the Pride of Science, 
which imagines that the Energy of Deity can be explained 
by its analysis. — Lectures on Art, sec. 38. 

We are all of us willing enough to accept dead truths 
or blunt ones, which can be fitted harmoniously into 
spare niches, or shrouded and cofiined at once out of the 
way, we holding complacently the cemetery keys, and 
supposing we have learned something. But a sapling 
truth, with earth at its root and blossom on its branches, 
or a trenchant truth that can cut its way through bars 
and sods, most men, it seems to me, dislike the sight or 
entertainment of, if by any means such guest or vision 
may be avoided. And, indeed, this is no wonder ; for 
one such truth, thoroughly accepted, connects itself 
strangely with others, and there is no saying what it 
may lead us to. — The Two Paths, preface. 

Almost the whole system and hope of modern life are 
founded on the notion that you may substitute mechan- 
ism for skill, photograph for picture, cast-iron for 



220 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sculpture. This is your main nineteenth century faith, 
or infidelity. You think you can get everything by 
grinding, — music, literature, and painting. You will 
find it grievously not so ; you can get nothing but dust 
by mere grinding. Even to have the barley-meal out of 
it, you must have the barley first ; and that comes by 
growth, not grinding. — Lectures on Art, sec. 100. 

I wish to plead for your several and future considera- 
tion of this one truth, that the notion of Discipline and 
Interference lies at the very root of all human progress 
or power ; that the ' Let Alone ' principle is, in all 
things which man has to do with, the principle of 
death ; that it is ruin to him, certain and total, if he lets 
his land alone — if he lets his fellow-men alone — if he 
lets his own soul alone. — A Joy Forever, lect. i. 

Human work must be done honourably and thoroughly 
because we are now Men : whether we ever expect to be 
angels, or ever were slugs, being practically no matter. 
— Fors Clavigera, letter Ixxvi. 

I think that every rightly constituted mind ought to 
rejoice, not so much in knowing anything clearly, as in 
feeling that there is infinitely more which it cannot 
know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over 
this, for we may always know more if we choose, by 
working on ; but the pleasure is, I think, to humble 
people, in knowing that the journey is endless, the 
treasure inexhaustible, — watching the cloud still march 



APHORISMS. 221 

before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure, 
that, to the end of time and to the length of eternity, 
the mysteries of its infinity will open still farther and 
farther, their dimness being the sign and necessary 
adjunct of their inexhaustibleness. — Mode^m Painters, 
vol. iv. part v. ch. v. 

The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to 
the strength and happiness of men, does not consist in 
the anxiety of a struggle to attain higher place or rank, 
but in gradually perfecting the manner, and accomplish- 
ing the ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which 
circumstances have determined for us. 

The first condition under which education can be 
given usefully is, that it should be clearly understood to 
be no means of getting on in the world, but a means of 
staying pleasantly in your place there. — Time and Tide, 
letters iv., xvi. 

I don't know any more tiresome flower in the borders 
than your especially ^ modest ' snowdrop ; which one 
always has to stoop down and take all sorts of tiresome 
trouble with, and nearly break its poor little head off, 
before you can see it ; and then, half of it is not worth 
seeing. Girls should be like daisies ; nice and white, 
with an edge of red, if you look close ; making the 
ground bright wherever they are ; knowing simply and 
quietly that they do it, and are meant to do it, and that 
it would be very wrong if they didn't do it. — Ethics of 
the Dust, vii. 



222 JOHN BUSKIN. 

One thing I solemnly desire to see all children taught 

— obedience ; and one to all persons entering into life 

— the power of unselfish admiration. — The Eaglets 
Nest, sec. 239. 

The moment a man can really do his work, he becomes 
speechless about it. All words become idle to him — all 
theories. — Mystery of Life, sec. 120. 

Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The 
Patience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or 
walks, or even runs : she seldom sits. — Ethics of the 
Dust, iv. 

There are three things to which man is born — labour, 
and sorrow, and joy. Each of these three things has its 
baseness and its nobleness. There is base labour, and 
noble labour. There is base sorrow, and noble sorrow. 
There is base ]oy, and noble joy. But you must not 
think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing 
without the things themselves. Nor can any life be 
right that has not all three. Labour without joy is base. 
Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is 
base. — Time and Tide, letter v. 

The will of God respecting us is that we shall live by 
each other's happiness, and life ; not by each other's 
misery, or death. A child may have to die for its par- 
ents ; but the purpose of Heaven is that it shall rather 
live for them ; — that, not by its sacrifice, but by its 



APHORISMS. 223 

strength, its joy, its force of being, it shall be to them 
renewal of strength ; and as the arrow in the hand of 
the giant. So it is in all other right relations. Men 
help each other by their joy, not by their sorrow. They 
are not intended to slay themselves for each other, but 
to strengthen themselves for each other. — Ethics of the 
Diist, vi. . 



224 JOHN BUSKIN. 



LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. 

My dear Children, — The rules of St. George's 
Company are none other than those which, at your bap- 
tism, your godfather and godmother promised to see 
that you should obey — namely, the rules of conduct 
given to all His disciples by Christ, so far as, according 
to your ages, you can understand or practise them. . . . 

St. George's first order to you, supposing you were put 
under his charge, would be that you should always, in 
whatever you do, endeavor to please Christ ; (and He is 
quite easily pleased if you try ; ) but in attempting this 
you will instantly find yourself likely to displease many of 
your friends or relations ; and St. George's second order 
to you is, that in whatever you do, you consider what is 
kind and dutiful to them also, and that you hold it for a 
sure rule that no manner of disobedience to your parents, 
or of disrespect and presumption towards your friends, 
can be pleasing to God. You must therefore be doubly 
submissive ; first in your own will and purpose to the 
law of Christ ; then in the carrying out of your purpose, 
to the pleasure and orders of the persons whom He has 
given you for superiors. And you are not to submit to 
them sullenly, but joyfully and heartily, keeping never- 
theless your own purpose clear, so soon as it becomes 
proper for you to carry it out. 



LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. 225 

Under these conditions, here are a few of St. G-eorge's 
orders for you to begin with : — 

1st. Keep absolute calm of temper, under all chances ; 
receiving everything that is provoking and disagreeable 
to you as coming directly from Christ's hand : and the 
more it is like to provoke you, thank Him for it the 
more : as a young soldier would his general for trusting 
him with a hard place to hold on the rampart. And 
remember, it does not in the least matter what happens 
to you, — whether a clumsy schoolfellow tears your dress, 
or a shrewd one laughs at you, or the governess doesn't 
understand you. The one thing needful is that none of 
these things should vex you. For your mind is at this 
time of your youth crystallizing like sugar-candy ; and 
the least jar to it flaws the crystal, and that permanently. 

2d. Say to yourself every morning, just after your 
prayers : " Whoso forsake th not all that he hath, cannot 
be my disciple." That is exactly and completely true : 
meaning that you are to give all you have to Christ to 
take care of for you. Then if He doesn't take care of it, 
of course you know it wasn't worth anything. And if He 
takes anything from you, you know you are better with- 
out it. You will not indeed, at your age, have to give up 
houses, or lands, or boats, or nets ; but you may perhaps 
break your favorite tea-cup, or lose your favorite thimble, 
and might be vexed about it, but for this second St. 
George's precept. 

3d. What, after this surrender, you find intrusted to 
you, take extreme care of, and make as useful as possible. 
The greater part of all they have is usually given to 



226 JOHN BliSKlN. 

grown-up people by Christy merely that they may 
give it away again : but school-girls, for the most part, 
are likely to have little more than what is needed for 
themselves : of which, whether books, dresses, or pretty 
room furniture, you are to take extreme care, looking on 
yourself, indeed, practically, as a little housemaid set to 
keep Christ's books and room in order, and not as your- 
self the mistress of anything. 

4th. Dress as plainly as your parents will allow you : 
but in bright colours, (if they become you,) and in the 
best materials, — that is to say, in those which will wear 
longest. When you are really in want of a new dress, 
buy it (or make it) in the fashion ; but never quit an old 
one merely because it has become unfashionable. And 
if the fashion be costly, you must not follow it. You 
may wear broad stripes or narrow, bright colours or dark, 
short petticoats or long, (in moderation,) as the public 
wish you ; but you must not buy yards of useless stuff 
to make a knot or a flounce of, nor drag them behind you 
over the ground. And your walking dress must never 
touch the ground at all. I have lost much of the faith I 
once had in the common sense and even in the personal 
delicacy of the present race of average Englishwomen, 
by seeing how they will allow their dresses to sweep the 
streets, if it is the fashion to be scavengers. 

5th. If you can afford it, get your dresses made by a 
good dressmaker, with utmost attainable precision and 
perfection : but let this good dressmaker be a poor person, 
living in the country ; not a rich person living in a large 
house in London. . . . 



LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. 22T 

6th. Learn dressmaking yourself, with pains and time ; 
and use a part of every day in needlework, making as 
pretty dresses as you can for poor people who have not 
time nor taste to make them nicely for themselves. You 
are to show them in your own wearing what is most 
right and graceful ; and to help them to choose what will 
be prettiest and most becoming in their own station. If 
they see that you never try to dress above yours they 
will not try to dress above theirs. . . . 

7th. Never seek for amusement, but be always ready 
to be amused. The least thing has play in it — the slight- 
est word, wit, when your hands are busy and your heart 
is free. But if you make the aim of your life amuse- 
ment, the day will come when all the agonies of a pan- 
tomime will not bring to you an honest laugh. Play 
actively and gayly ; and cherish, without straining, the 
natural powers of jest in others and yourselves ; remem- 
bering all the while that your hand is every instant on 
the helm of the ship of your life, and that the Master, 
on the far shore of Araby the Blest, looks for its sail on 
the horizon, — to its hour. — Now that it is ^considered 
improper ' by the world that you should do anything for 
Christ, is entirely true, and always true ; and therefore it 
was that your godfathers and godmothers, in your name, 
renounced the " vain pomp and glory of the world," with 
all covetous desires of the same — see baptismal service 
— but I much doubt if you, either privately or from the 
pulpit of your doubtless charming church, have ever 
been taught what the " vain pomp and glory of the world " 
was. 



228 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Well, do you want to be better dressed than your 
schoolfellows ? Some of them are probably poor, and 
cannot afford to dress like you ; or, on the other hand, 
you may be poor yourselves, and may be mortified at 
their being dressed better than you. Put an end to all 
that at once, by resolving to go down into the deep of 
your girl's heart, where you will find, inlaid by Christ's 
own hand, a better thing than vanity — pity. And be 
sure of this, that, although in a truly Christian land, 
every young girl would be dressed beautifully and 
delightfully, — in this entirely heathen and Bael-wor- 
shipping land of ours, not one girl in ten has either 
decent or healthy clothing, and that you have no busi- 
ness now to wear anything fine yourself, but are bound 
to use your full strength and resources to dress as many 
of your poor neighbours as you can. What of fine dress 
your people insist upon your wearing, take — and wear 
proudly and prettily, for their sakes ; but, so far as it in 
you lies, be sure that every day you are labouring to 
clothe some poorer creatures. And if you cannot clothe, 
at least help, with your hands. You can make your 
own bed; wash your own plate; brighten your own 
furniture, — if nothing else. 

' But that's servant's work ! ' Of course it is. What 
business have you to hope to be better than a servant of 
servants ? ^ God made you a lady ' ? Yes, He has put 
you, that is to say, in a position in which you may learn 
to speak your own language beautifully ; to be accu- 
rately acquainted with the elements of other languages ; 
to behave with grace, tact, and sympathy to all around 



LETTER TO YOUNG GIRLS. 229 

you ; to know the history of your country, the commands 
of its religion, and the duties of its use. If you obey 
His will in learning these things, you will obtain the 
power of becoming a true ' lady,' and you will become 
one, if while j^ou learn these things you set yourself, 
with all the strength of your j^outh and womanhood, to 
serve His servants, until the day come when He calls 
you to say, ' Well done, good and faithful servant : enter 
thou into the joy of thy Lord.' 

You may thus become a Christ's lady, or you may, if 
you will, become a Belial's lady, taking Belial's gift of 
miserable idleness, living on the labour and shame of 
others, and deceiving them and yourself by lies about 
Providence, until you perish with the rest of such, 
shrieking the bitter cry, * When saw we Thee ? ' 

You may become a Christ's lady if you will, I say ; 
but you must will vigorously — there is no possible 
compromise. Most people think, if they keep all the 
best rooms in the house swept and garnished for Christ, 
with plenty of flowers and good books in them, that 
they may keep a little chamber in their heart's wall for 
Belial, on his occasional visits, or a three-legged stool 
for him in the heart's counting-house, or a corner for 
him in the heart's scullery, where he may lick the 
dishes. It won't do, my dears ! You must cleanse the 
house of him, as you would of the plague, to the last 
spot. You must be resolved that as all you have shall 
be God's, so all you are shall be God's ; and you are to 
make it so, simply and quietly, by thinking always of 
yourself merely as sent to do His work ; and considering 



230 JOHN BUSKIN. 

at every leisure time what you are to do next. Bon^t 
fret nor tease yourself about it, far less other people. 
Don't wear white crosses, nor black dresses, nor caps 
with lappets. Nobody has any right to go about in an 
offensively celestial uniform, as if it were more their 
business, or privilege, than it is everybody's, to be God's 
servants. But, know and feel assuredly that every day 
of your lives you have done all you can for the good of 
others. Done, I repeat — not said. Help your com- 
panions, but don't talk religious sentiment to them ; 
and serve the poor, but, for your lives, you little mon- 
keys, don't preach to them. They are probably, with- 
out in the least knowing it, fifty times better Christians 
than you ; and if anybody is to preach, let thein. Make 
friends of them when they are nice, as you do of nice 
rich people ; feel with them, work with them, and if 
you are not at last sure it is a pleasure to you both to 
see each other, keep out of their way. For material 
charity, let older and wiser people see to it; and be 
content, like Athenian maids in the procession of their 
home-goddess, with the honour of carrying the basket. 
Ever affectionately yours, 

J. E. 
— Fo7's Clavigera, letters Ixv., Ixvi. 



TBANCE. 231 



TRANCE. 

This intense apathy in all of us is the first great mys- 
tery of life ; it stands in the way of every perception, 
every virtue. There is no making ourselves feel enough 
astonishment at it. That the occupations or pastimes of 
life should have no motive, is understandable ; but — That 
life itself should have no motive — that we neither care 
to find out what it may lead to, nor to guard against its 
being forever taken away from us — here is a mystery 
indeed. For, just suppose I were able to call at this 
moment to any one in this audience by name, and to tell 
him positively that I knew a large estate had been lately 
left to him on some curious conditions ; but that, though 
I knew it was large, I did not know how large, nor even 
where it was — whether in the East Indies or the West, 
or in England, or at the Antipodes. I only knew it was 
a vast estate, and that there was a chance of his losing 
it altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms 
it had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say 
this positively to any single man in this audience, and 
he knew that I did not speak without warrant, do you 
think that he would rest content with that vague knowl- 
edge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more ? 
Would he not give every energy to find some trace of 
the facts, and never rest till he had ascertained where 
this place was, and what it was like ? And suppose he 



232 JOHN BUSKIN. 

were a young man, and all he could discover by his best 
endeavor was, that the estate was never to be his at all 
unless he persevered during certain years of probation, 
in an orderly and industrious life ; but that, according 
to the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the estate 
assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it 
literally depended on his behaviour from day to day 
whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty thousand 
a year, or nothing whatever — would you not think it 
strange if the youth never troubled himself to satisfy 
the conditions in any way, nor even to know what was 
required of him, but lived exactly as he chose, and never 
inquired whether his chances of the estate were in- 
creasing or passing away ? Well, you know that this 
is actually and literally so with the greater number of 
the educated persons now living in Christian countries. 
Nearly every man and woman, in any company such as 
this, outwardly professes to believe — and a large num- 
ber unquestionably think they believe — much more 
than this ; not only that a quite limited estate is in 
prospect for them if they please the Holder of it, but 
that the infinite contrary of such a possession — an 
estate of perpetual misery, is in store for them if they 
displease this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven- 
Holder. And yet there is not one in a thousand of these 
human souls that cares to think, for ten minutes of the 
day, where this estate is, or how beautiful it is, or what 
kind of life they are to lead in it, or what kind of life 
they must lead to obtain it. — The Mystery of Life, 
sec. 108. 



WORLD'S WORK. 238 



WORLD'S WORK. 

Whenever the arts and labours of life are fulfilled in 
this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing what- 
ever we have to do, honourably and perfectly, they inva- 
riably bring happiness, as much as seems possible to the 
nature of man. In all other paths, by which that happi- 
ness is pursued, there is disappointment, or destruction : 
for ambition and for passion there is no rest — no frui- 
tion ; the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness 
greater than their past light ; and the loftiest and purest 
love too often does but inflame the cloud of life with 
endless tire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to 
highest, through every scale of human industry, that in- 
dustry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the labourer 
in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the 
patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, 
fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and with 
the colours of light ; and none of these, who are true 
workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the 
law of heaven an unkind one — that in the sweat of their 
face they should eat bread, till they return to the ground; 
nor that they ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, 
indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the command — 
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might." 



234 JOHN BUSKIN. 

There are the two great and constant lessons which our 
labourers teach us of the mystery of life. But there is 
another, and a sadder one, which they cannot teach us, 
which they must read on their tombstones. 

"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads 
upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed this 
law, — who have put every breath and nerve of their 
being into its toil, — who have devoted every hour, and 
exhausted every faculty, — who have bequeathed their 
unaccomplished thoughts at death, — who, being dead, 
have yet spoken by majesty of memory, and strength 
of example. And, at last, what has all this "Might" 
of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of 
labour and sorrow ? What has it done ? Take the 
three chief occupations and arts of men, one by one, 
and count their achievements. Begin with the first 
— the lord of them all — agriculture. Six thousand 
years have passed since we were set to till the ground 
from which we were taken. How much of it is 
tilled ? How much of that which is, wisely or well ? 
In the very centre and chief garden of Europe — where 
the two forms of parent Christianity have had their fort- 
resses — where the noble Catholics of the Forest Can- 
tons, and the noble Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, 
have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths and lib- 
erties, — there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild 
in devastation : and the marshes, which a few hundred 
men could redeem with a year's labour, still blast their 
helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism. That is so^ 
in the centre of Europe ! While, on the near coast of 



WORLD'S WORK. 235 

Africa, once the garden of the Hespericles, an Arab 
woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child for 
famine. And, with all the treasures of the East at our 
feet, we, in our own dominion, could not find a few 
grains of rice for a people that asked of us no more ; 
but stood by, and saw five hundred thousand of them 
perish of hunger. 

Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next 
head of human arts — weaving ; the art of queens, 
honoured of all noble Heathen women, in the person of 
their virgin goddess — honoured of all Hebrew women, 
by the word of their wisest king : " She layeth her 
hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaif ; she 
stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not afraid 
of the snow for her household, for all her household are 
clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of 
tapestry, her clothing is silk and purple. She maketh 
fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles to the 
merchant." What have we done in all these thousands 
of years with this bright art of* Greek maid and Christian 
matron ? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we 
learned to weave ? Might not every naked wall have 
been purple with tapestry, and every feeble breast fenced 
Avith sweet colors from the cold ? What have we done ? 
Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some 
poor covering for our bodies. We set our streams to 
work for us, and choke the air with fire, to turn our 
spinning-wheels — and, — are we yet clothed ? Are not the 
streets of the capitals of Europe foul with the sale of 
cast clouts and rotten rags ? Is not the beauty of your 



236 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, 
with better honour, nature clothes the brood of the bird 
in its nest, and the suckling of the wolf in her den ? 
And does not every winter's snow robe what you have 
not robed, and shroud what you have not shrouded ; and 
every winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted 
souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice 
of their Christ, — "I was naked, and ye clothed me 
not"? 

Lastly, take the Art of Building — the strongest, 
proudest, most orderly, most enduring of the arts of 
man, that of which the produce is in the surest manner 
accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced ; but if 
once well done, will stand more strongly than the unbal- 
anced rocks — more prevalently than the crumbling hills. 
The art which is associated with all civic pride and 
sacred principle ; with which men record their power, 
satisfy their enthusiasm, make sure their defence, 
define and make dear their habitation. And, in six thou- 
sand years of building, what have we done ? Of the 
greater part of all that skill and strength, no vestige is 
left, but fallen stones that encumber the fields and im- 
pede the streams. But, from this waste of disorder, and 
of time and of rage, what is left to us ? Constructive 
and progressive creatures, that we are, with ruling brains, 
and forming hands, capable of fellowship, and thirsting 
for fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with the in- 
sects of the forest, or, in achievement, with the worm of 
the sea? The white surf rages in vain against the ram- 
parts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent life ; but 



WORLD'S WORK. 237 

only ridges of formless ruin mark the places where once 
dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth 
have cells for each of their young, but our little ones lie 
in festering heaps, in homes that consume them like 
graves ; and night by night, from the corners of our 
streets, rises up the cry of the homeless — "I was a 
stranger, and ye took me not in." . . . 

Is there but one day of judgment ? Why, for us 
every day is a day of judgment, — every day is a Dies 
Irse, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of 
its West. Think you that judgment waits till the doors 
of the grave are opened ? It waits at the doors of your 
houses, — it waits at the corners of your streets ; we are 
in the midst of judgment, the insects that we crush are 
our judges, the moments we fret away are our judges, 
the elements that feed us, judge, as they minister, — 
and the pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. 
Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear 
the Form of them, if indeed those lives are Not as a vapor, 
and do J^ot vanish away. 

" The work of men " — and what is that ? Well, we 
may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of 
being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the 
most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of 
what we are to get ; and the best of us are sunk into the 
sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal one — we want to keep 
back part of the price ; and we continually talk of taking 
up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the 
weight of it — as if it was only a thing to be carried in- 
stead of to be — crucified upon. " They that are His 



238 JOHN RUSKIN. 

have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts." 
Does that mean, think you, that in time of national dis- 
tress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and 
hope of humanity — none of us will cease jesting, none 
cease idling, none put themselves to any wholesome 
work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their foot- 
man's coats, to save the world ? Or does it rather mean, 
that they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds — 
yes, and life, if need be ? Life ! — some of us are ready 
enough to throw that away, joyless as we have made it. 
But ^' station in Life," how many of us are ready to quit 
that? Is it not always the great objection, where there 
is question of finding something useful to do, "We 
cannot leave our stations in life " ? 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who 
can only maintain themselves by continuing in some 
business or salaried ofiice, have already something to do ; 
and all that they have to see to, is that they do it hon- 
estly and with all their might. But with most people 
who use that apology, " remaining in the station of life 
to which Providence has called them," means keeping all 
the carriages, and all the footmen and large houses they, 
can possibly pay for ; and, once for all, I say that if ever 
Providence did put them into stations of that sort — 
which is not at all a matter of certainty — Providence is 
just now very distinctly calling them out again. Levi's 
station in life was the receipt of custom ; and Peter's, the 
shore of Galilee ; and Paul's, the antechambers of the 
High Priest, — which "station in life " each had to leave, 
with brief notice. 



WORLD'S WORK. 239 

And, whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, 
those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought, first, to 
live on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to do all the 
wholesome work for it we can, and to spend all we can 
spare in doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is first in feeding people, then in dress- 
ing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in rightly 
pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any other sub- 
ject of thought. 

I say first in feeding ; and, once for all, do not let 
yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk of 
" indiscriminate charity." The order to us is not to feed 
the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor 
the amiable and well-intentioned hungry; but simply to 
feed the hungry. It is quite true, infallibly true, that if 
any man will not work, neither should he eat, — think of 
that, and every time you sit down to your dinner, ladies 
and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, 
" How much work have I done to-day for my dinner ? " 
But the proper way to enforce that order on those below 
you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds 
and honest people to starve together, but very distinctly 
to discern and seize your vagabond ; and shut your vaga- 
bond up out of honest people's way, and very sternly 
then see that, until he has worked, he does 7iot eat. But 
the first thing is to be sure 3^ou have the food to 
give ; and, therefore, to enforce the organization of vast 
activities in agriculture and in commerce, for the pro- 
duction of the wholesomest food, and proper storing and 
distribution of it, so that no famine shall any more be 



240 JOHN RUSKW. 

possible among civilized beings. There is plenty of 
work in this business alone, and at once, for any number 
of people who like to engage in it. 

Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, urging 
every one within reach of your influence to be always 
neat and clean, and giving them means of being so. In 
so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give up the 
effort with respect to them, only taking care that no 
children within your sphere of influence shall any more 
be brought up with such habits ; and that every person 
who is willing to dress with propriety shall have 
encouragement to do so. And the first absolutely ne- 
cessary step towards this is the gradual adoption of a 
consistent dress for different ranks of persons, so that 
their rank shall be known by their dress ; and the re- 
striction of the changes of fashion within certain limits. 
All which appears for the present quite impossible ; but 
it is only so far even difficult, as it is difficult to con- 
quer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what we 
are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, 
that these mean and shallow vices are unconquerable by 
Christian women. 

And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may 
think should have been put first, but I put it third, be- 
cause we must feed and clothe people where we find 
them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing lodg- 
ment for them means a great deal of vigorous legislation, 
and cutting down of vested interests that stand in the 
way, and after that, or before that, so far as we can get 
it, through sanitary and remedial action in the houses 



WORLD'S WORK. 241 

that we have ; and then the building of more, strongly, 
beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in pro- 
portion to their streams, and walled round, so that there 
may be no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but 
clean and busy street within, and open country without, 
with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard round the 
walls, so that from any part of the city, perfectly fresh 
air and grass, and sight of far horizon might be reach- 
able in a few minutes' walk. This the final aim ; but in 
immediate action every minor and possible good to be 
instantly done, when, and as, we can ; roofs mended that 
have holes in them, fences patched that have gaps in 
them, walls buttressed that totter, and floors propped 
that shake ; cleanliness and order enforced with our own 
hands and- eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And 
all the fine arts will healthily follow. I myself have 
washed a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and 
broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed their 
stairs since they first went up them ; and I never made 
a better sketch than that afternoon. 

These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life ; 
and the law for every Christian man and woman is, that 
they shall be in direct service towards one of these three 
needs, as far as is consistent with their own special 
occupation, and if they have no special business, then 
wholly in one of these services. And out of such exer- 
tion in plain duty all other good will come ; for in this 
direct contention with material evil, you will find out the 
real nature of all evil ; you will discern by the various 
kinds of resistance, what is really the fault and main 



242 JOHN BUSKIN. 

antagonism to good ; also you will find the most unex- 
pected helps and profound lessons given, and truths will 
come thus down to us, which the speculation of all our 
lives would never have raised us up to. You will find 
nearly every educational problem solved, as soon as you 
truly want to do something ; everybody will become of 
use in their own fittest way, and will learn what is best 
for them to know in that use. Competitive examination 
will then, and not till then, be wholesome, because it will 
be daily, and calm, and in practice ; and on these familiar 
arts, and minute, but certain and serviceable knowledges, 
will be surely edified and sustained the greater arts and 
splendid theoretical sciences. 

But much more than this. On such holy and simple 
practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an infallible 
religion. The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and 
the most terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest 
religion, which is not daily founded on rational, effective, 
humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, observe ! 
for there is just one law, which obeyed, keeps all reli- 
gions pure; forgotten, makes them all false. Whenever 
in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our 
minds to dwell upon the points in which we differ from 
other people, we are wrong, and in the deviPs power. 
That is the essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving, 
"Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men are." 
At every moment of our lives we should be trying to find 
out, not in what we differ from other people, but in what 
we agree with them ; and the moment we find we can 
agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good, 



WOELD'S WOBK. 243 

(and who but fools couldn't ? ) then do it ; push at it to- 
gether ; you can't quarrel in a side-by-side push ; but the 
moment that even the best men stop pushing, and begin 
talking, they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and it's 
all over. — The Mystery of Life, sees. 128-140. 



244 JOHN BUSKIN. 



WORLD'S WOETH. 

Every seventh day, if not oftener, tlie greater number 
of well-meaning people in England thankfully receive 
from their teachers a benediction, couched in these 
terms : " The Grace of our Lord Christ, and the Love 
of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with 
you.'' Now I do not know precisely what sense is 
attached, in the English public mind, to these expres- 
sions. But what I have to tell you positively is, that 
the three things do actually exist, and can be known if 
you care to know them, and possessed if you care to 
possess them ; and that another thing exists, besides 
these, of which we already know too much. 

Eirst, by simply obeying the orders of the Founder of 
your religion, all grace, graciousness, or beauty and 
favour of gentle life, will be given to you in mind and 
body, in work and in rest. The Grace of Christ exists, 
and can be had if you will. Secondly, as you know 
more and more of the created world, you will find that 
the true will of its Maker is that its creatures should be 
happy; that He has made everything beautiful in its 
time and its place, and that it is chiefly by the fault of 
men, when they are allowed the liberty of thwarting 
His laws, that Creation groans and travails in pain. 
The Love of God exists, and you may see it and live 
in it if you will. Lastly, a Spirit does actually exist 



WORLD'S WOBTH. 245 

wliicli teaches tlie ant her path ; the bird, her building ; 
and men, in an instinctive and marvellous way, what- 
ever lovely arts and noble deeds are possible to them. 
Without it, you can do no good thing. To the grief of 
it, yoi* can do many bad ones. In the possession of it, is 
your peace and your power. 

And there is a fourth thing of which we already know 
too much. There is an evil spirit whose dominion is in 
blindness and cowardice, as the dominion of the Spirit 
of wisdom is in clear sight and in courage. 

And this blind and cowardly spirit is forever telling 
you that evil things are pardonable, and you shall not 
die for them, and that good things are impossible, and 
you need not live for them ; and that gospel of his is 
now the loudest that is preached in your Saxon tongue. 
You will find some day, to your cost, if you believe the 
first part of it, that it is not true ; but you may never, 
if you believe the second part of it, find, to your gain, 
that also, untrue ; and therefore, I pray you with all 
earnestness to prove, and know within your hearts, that 
all things lovely and righteous are possible for those 
who believe in their possibility, and who determine 
that, for their part, they will make every day's work con- 
tribute to them. Let every dawn of morning be to you as 
the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as 
its close : — then let every one of these short lives leave 
its record of some kindly thing done for others — some 
goodly strength or knowledge gained for yourselves ; so, 
from day to day, and strength to strength, you shall 
build up indeed, by Art, by Thought, and by Just Will, 



246 JOHN BUSKIN. 

an Ecclesia of England, of which it shall not be said, 
"See what manner of stones are here," but "See what 
manner of men." — Lectures on Art, sec. 125. 

Those of you who still go to chapel say every day 
your creed. . . . Now, you may cease to believe two 
articles of it, and — admitting Christianity to be true — 
still be forgiven. But I can tell you, you must not 
cease to believe the third ! 

You begin by saying that you believe in an Almighty 
Father. Well, you may entirely lose the sense of that 
Fatherhood, and yet be forgiven. 

You go on to say that you believe in a Saviour Son. 
You may entirely lose the sense of that Sonship, and 
yet be forgiven. 

But the third article — disbelieve if you dare ! " I 

believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life.^^ 

■ Disbelieve that, and your own being is degraded into 

the state of dust driven by the wind; and the elements 

of dissolution have entered your very heart and soul. 

All Nature with one voice, with one glory, is set to 
teach you reverence for the life communicated to you 
from the Father of Spirits. The song of birds, and 
their plumage ; the scent of flowers, their colour, their 
very existence, are in direct connection with the mystery 
of that communicated life : and all the strength, and all 
the arts of men, are measured by, and founded upon, 
their reverence for the passion, and their guardianship 
of the purity of Love. — The Eaglets Nest, sec. 169. 



NOTES. 



RUSKIN THE BEVEALER OF NATURE. 

Page 30. Poetry will be found to illustrate, better than any word 
of comment, these prose-poems of Ruskin. Vaughan, Wordsworth, 
and Shelley are of closer spiritual kin to him than any prose-\(^riter, 
even Thoreau or Jeffries. Of the wealth of comparative material to 
be found in these poets and others, only a few hints can here be 
offered; but the loving student, if he have leisure, can illumine 
almost every sentence of these selections by kindred interpretations 
from those " priests of Nature," the poets. 

P. 32. The Consecration. To Wordsworth, a like solemn 
moment came at sunrise. See " The Prelude," Book IV., lines 320, 
340. Wordsworth's account of the gradual education of his child- 
spirit by nature, given in the first four books of "The Prelude," 
should be compared with Ruskin's hints, scattered through " Prae- 
terita." Tluskin, like Wordsworth, might say of his soul, responding 
to the passion of nature, — 

" I was as sensitive as waters are 
To the sky's influence in a kindred mood 
Of passion : was obedient as a lute 
That waits upon the touches of the wind." 

Pp. 33, 36. Air and Clouds. The first selection here should be 
minutely analyzed. Apparently a glowing outburst of sentiment, it 
is really a close, comprehensive, exact, scientific study ; every word 
carries the weight of a distinct fact. 

P. 36. Compare Shelley, "Lines written among the Euganean 
Hills." 

P. 41. Water. Cf. Shelley's poem, " The Recollection ; " — 
'• We paused beside the pools that lie 
Under the forest bough ; 
Each seemed as 'twere a little sky 
Gulfd in a world below ; 



248 JOHN B USKIN. 



A firmament of purple light 

Which in the dark earth lay, 
More boundless than the depth of night, 

And purer than the day — 
In which the lovely forests grew 

As in the upper air, 
More perfect both in shape and hue 

Than any spreading there." 

Page 41. Compare, with this passage on the Rhone, a beautiful 
little poem on the " Waterfall," by Henry Vaughan, a poet of the 
seventeenth century, who loved nature with the soul of the nine- 
teenth. The poem begins: — 

" With what deep murmurs, through Time's silent stealth, 
Dost thy transparent, cool, and watery wealth 

Here flowing fall, 

And chide and call. 
As if his liquid loose retinue stayed 
Lingering, and were of this steep place afraid; — 

The common pass 

As clear as glass, 

All must descend. 

Not to an end, 
But, quickened by this deep and rocky grave. 
Else to a longer course, more bright and brave." 

P. 43. 3Iountains. Compare Browning, in " James Lee's 
Wife:" — 

" Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth, 
This Autumn morning ! How he sets his bones 
To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet 
For the ripple to run over in its mirth." 

P. 45. Compare Emerson, in " Monadnock : " — 
" Hither we bring 
Our insect miseries to thy rocks; 
And the whole flight, with folded wing. 
Vanish, and end their murmuring — 
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks, 
Which who can tell what mason laid? " 

P. 47. Vegetation. This fragment is given as an instance of 
Buskin's luminous power of classification. 



NOTES. 249 

Page 54. This suggestion of an almost human character in the 
leaves recalls Sidney Lanier, in his " Sunrise: " — 
♦' Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, 
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under forms, 
Ye ministers meet for each passion that grieves, 
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves — 

Teach me the terms of silence, — preach me 

The passion of patience, — sift me, — impeach me, — 

And there, oh there. 
As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air 

Pray me a myriad prayer." 

P. 57. Vignettes. These short word-pictures are introduced in 
order that the student may carefully analyze Ruskin's wonderful 
power of presenting the whole landscape — aspect and emotion — in 
a dozen lines. Every word deserves separate study, and will be 
found, as a rule, to give to the passage, not only an added beauty, but 
an essential truth. 

P. 58. Alpine Architecture. Compare Arnold : — 
" Hark! fast by the window 
The rushing winds go. 
To the ice-cumbered gorges, 
The vast seas of snow! 
' There the torrents drive upward 

Their rock-strangled hum; 
There the avalanche thunders 
The hoarse torrent dumb." 

P. 59. Distant Peaks. Compare Shelley, in the " Prometheus 

Unbound: " — 

"And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains, 
From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling 
The dawn." 

P. 60. The Breaker on the Rocks. Of this sentence, from the 
" Harbours of England," Ruskin has lately told us that he is really 
proud! He misquotes his own words, however; his later version is: 
"One moment, a flint cave; the next, a marble pillar; the next, a 
fading cloud." 



250 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Page 69. The Secret of the Mist. This is the message so con- 
stantly and nobly reiterated to the century by Robert Browning : — 

" You must mix some uncertainty 
With faith, if you would have faith be." 

P. 70. Natural Myths. Compare Vaughan, as he speaks of the 
significance nature once had for him : — 

'• Wlien yet I had not walked above 
A mile or two from my first Love, 
And looking back — at that short space — 
Could see a glimpse of His bright face : — 
When on some gilded cloud, or flower, 
My gazing soul would dwell an hour, 
And in those weaker glories spy 
Some shadows of Eternity." 

Also Emerson, in his essay on Nature: — "Every natural fact is a 
symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corre- 
sponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only 
be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture. . . . 
It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these 
analogies, but that they are constant, and pervade nature." 

P. 81. Living Nature. This passage contains Ruskin's comments 
on the great evolution theory. It will be seen that, while laughing at 
some of its cruder phases, he is quite ready to accept some of its nobler 
results ; but the one truth that he reiterates with constant earnestness 
is, that the question of method of creation is utterly subordinate to the 
greater questions of source of creation, and the effect of created nature 
upon the soul. 

P. 84. This is the great conception which has always inspired 
mystics and poets, but which was, until our century, viewed by 
science as an imaginative figment. It is the glory of modern science, 
however, to have corroborated the synthesis of the imagination, by 
unfolding before us the vision of the Persistence or Unity of Force. 
To the eye of the scientist, this Force is not yet proved to be Life ; 
but, to the faith of the poet, it must ever be so. Perhaps here, too, 
poetry will prove the precursor of science. Meanwhile, the faith in 



NOTES. 251 

the Life in Nature is nowhere more truthfully given than in "Words- 
■worth's glorious and familiar lines : — 

" I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

— Lines written above Tintern Abbey. 

RUSKIN THE CRITIC OF ART. 

Page 94. The Imagination. These passages from the second 
volume of "Modern Painters " are of interest so great and guidance 
so helpful that they are introduced, although Mr. Ruskin, reprinting 
the volume in 1883, makes severe fun of his youthful self, and sharply 
criticises many details of his treatment. But the book was written, 
he tells us, " day after day with higher kindled feeling; " and it pos- 
sesses the insight of enthusiasm. 

P. 98. The Power of Famine. A reference to Dante's "In- 
ferno," XXXIII. 20-90. 

P. 102. The Temper ot the Artist. All thoughtful critics 
agree in ascribing to geniu.s this strange passivity. E. S. Dallas calls 
"unconsciousness the highest law of poetry; " his definition of poetry 
is, "the imaginative, harmonious, and unconscious activity of the 
soul." 

P. 106. Compare George Eliot, in "Adam Bede," chap, xxxiii., 
on the beauty of a foolish woman. 

P. 110. Three Schools of Art. Purist Idealism. In his youth 
this was the school of art best loved by Ruskin. See the conclusion 
of the second volume of "Modern Painters." But his Venetian 
studies taught him the power of the great Naturalists, Titian and 
Tiutoret; and " ever since the ' Stones of Venice ' was written, Titian 
was given in all my art teaching as a standard of perfection." See 
" Fors Clavigera," Letter 76, for a singularly interesting account of 
the effect of this change of standard on his religious attitude. 



252 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Page 114. Compare Browning, " Old Masters in Florence: " — 

"On which I conclude, that the early painters, 

To cries of ' Greek Art and what more wish you? ' 
Replied, ' To become now self-acquainters, 
And paint man, man, whatever the issue.' " 

And again, in "Fra Lippo Lippi," — a poem which is throughout a 
commentary on these passages from Ruskin — the truant monk quotes 
his critics : — 

" ' Give us no more of body than shows soul — 

Here's Giotto, with his saint a-praising God! 

That sets you praising, — why not stop with him? 

Why put all thoughts of praise out of our heads 

"With wonder at lines, colour, and what not? 

Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms ! ' 

Now, is this sense, I ask? 
A fair way to paint soul, by painting body 
So ill, the eye can't stop there, must go farther. 
And can't fare worse ! . . . 

You've seen the world, 
The beauty, and the wonder, and the power. 
The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades, 
Changes, surprises, — and God made it all ! — 
For what? Do j'ou feel thankful? Aye, or no? 

. . . What's it all about? 
To be passed o'er, despised? Or dwelt upon. 
Wondered at? oh, this last, of course, you say. 
But why not do as well as say, — paint these 
Just as they are, careless what comes of it, 
God's works — paint any one, and count it crime 
To let a truth slip." 

P. 115. The Development of Landscape Art. This long 
passage, much condensed, is given from an early lecture, not because 
it is beautiful, but because it presents a summary of the main trend 
and conclusions of " Modern Painters." See especially the chapters 
in Vol. III. on Classical, Mediaeval, and Modern Landscape. 

P. 117. See " The Two Paths," Lecture III., for a full discussion 
of conventional and decorative art. 

P. 118. The whole study of the Renascence, in the third volume 
of the ** Stones of Venice," is an amplification of this passage. 



NOTES. 253 

Page 125. In "The Iris of the Earth," Deucalion, chap, vii., 
Ruskin gives us a beautiful study of the rainbow hues, in their sym- 
bolism, as found in the characteristic gems of heraldry. 

P. 131. In these closing passages will be found suggestions of the 
order of thought by which Ruskin was led to change the chief interest 
of his life from Art to Economics. The half-humourous caricature of 
the next paragraph still has its foundation of fact in the immense 
spread of disfiguring manufactures over the pastoral country of 
England. 

RUSKIN THE STUDENT OF SOCIOLOGY. 

P. 145. Foolish men imagine that, because judgment for an evil 
thing is delayed, there is no justice but an accidental one here below. 
Judgment for an evil thing may be delayed some day or two, some 
century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death ! In the centre 
of the whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks 
a god. Carlyle, " Past and Present," chap. ii. 
P. 146. Arraignment. 

" We live by admiration, hope and love, 
And even as these are well and wisely placed 
In dignity of being we ascend. 

Wordsworth, Excursion, Book IV. 

Vehement in language, and, for Americans, somewhat exagger- 
ated in substance, this solemn indictment of modern corruptions 
has, nevertheless, sufficient literal truth to commend it to thought. 
It still holds good to some extent on every point, unless in regard 
to modern conceit and self-complacency. These qualities are assur- 
edly less marked in contemporary thought than they were when 
this passage was written, twenty years ago. 

P. 149. Wealth and Life. Here, Ruskin formulates his convic- 
tion of the relation of human choice to economic law, and the effect 
of moral facts upon economic conditions. Compare Carlyle, "Past 
and Present," Book I., chaps, i. and ii. : — ""We can spend thousands 
where we once spent hundreds, but can piirchase nothing good with 
them. In poor and rich, instead of noble thrift and plenty, there is idle 
luxury alternating with mean scarcity and inability. We have sumpt- 
uous garnitures for our Life, but have forgotten to live in the midst of 
them. It is enchanted wealth; no man of us can yet touch it. . . . 



254 JOHN BUSKIN. 

To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth? Who is it that it 
hlesses? As yet no one. We have more riches than any nation ever 
had before; we have less good of them than any nation ever had 
before. . . ." 

P. 155. The State and the Workman. Here is the best defence 
and explanation Ruskin offers of his much-attacked Sislike of steam 
machinery. It will be seen that there is a certain principle underlying 
his eccentricity. His disbelief in railroads and steam has, however, 
been exaggerated, largely because of his whimsical methods of expres- 
sion. He tells us in all soberness that he would use steam-power for 
reclaiming waste-lands and doing work on a vast scale where human 
force is insufficient. He would abolish "most of the railroads in 
England and all in Wales;" but he explains that he would retain 
lines of railroad (run by government) between great centres, while not 
permitting them to deface the beautiful scenery of the world. (See 
Letters on the Management of Railways in the collection entitled 
" On the Old Road.") His own use of railroads he defends by assert- 
ing that, were the devil himself at his elbow, he should utilize him 
as a local black! 

P. 159. This plea for government employment for the unemployed 
sounded strange indeed when first made by Ruskin. Carlyle, in 
"Past and Present," Book IV., chaps, iv. and v., and in Latter Day 
Pamphlets, " The Present Time," makes the same plea, with much cau- 
tion and the proud assurance of being greeted with derision. He puts 
it into the mouth of his hypothetic and ideal Prime Minister; but as 
soon as that worthy deigns to pronounce the revolutionary words 
" Organization of Labour," his horrified audience desert him in a body, 
and he is "'left speaking,' says the reporter." Now, this demand 
for State control of labour is growing yearly in weight, and in some 
details is already met. 

P. 161. Fallacies. This idea, that it does not matter for what 
purposes money is spent, since it must encourage some industry or 
other, is entertained, strangely enough, by many excellent and intel- 
ligent people. Kingsley, in the thirty-ninth chapter of "Alton 
Locke," discusses and demolishes it as completely as Ruskin does 
here. 

P. 169. Justice and Equality. It will be obvious from these 
passages how deeply Ruskin believes in the necessity of just and 
varying rewards for honest labour, 



NOTES. 255 

Page 175. Elsewhere, Ruskin, acknowledging the degrading influ- 
ence of certain forms of necessary work, proposes that ardent young 
High-Churchmen, instead of turning curates, should prove the reality 
of their desire for self-immolation by becoming butchers and green- 
grocers. 

P. 178. Prospect and Present Duty. Carlyle says, to the 
individual, " Thou, there, the thing for thee to do is, if possible, to 
cease to be a hollow sounding-shell of hearsays, egoisms, purblind 
dilettanteisms ; and become, were it on the infinitely small scale, a 
faithful, discerning soul. . . . O brother, we must, if possible, resusci- 
tate some soul and conscience in us. Exchange . . . our dead hearts 
of stone for living hearts of flesh. Then shall we discern, not one 
thing, but in clearer or dimmer sequence, a whole endless host of 
things that can be done. Do the first of these ; do it ; the second will 
already have become clearer, doabler." 

P. 179. " There will a radical, imiversal alteration of your regi- 
men and way of life take place ; there will a most agonizing divorce 
between you and your chimeras, luxuries, and falsities take place ; a 
most toilsome, ail-but ' impossible ' return to Nature and her veraci- 
ties and integrities take place ; that so the inner fountains of life may 
again begin, like eternal Light-fountains to irradiate and purify your 
bloated, swollen, foul existence, drawing nigh, as at present, to name- 
less death."'— Pasi and Present, Book I., chap. iv. 

It will be noticed how much more tender and more Christian is the 
tone of Ruskin than the tone of Carlyle. 

P. 182. The Merchant Chivalry. "The Leaders of Industry, if 
Industry is ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of the World ; 
if there is no nobleness in them, there will never be an Aristocracy 
more. . . . Let the Captains of Industry retire into their own hearts, 
and ask solemnly, If there is nothing but vulturous hunger for fine 
wines, valet reputation, and gilt carriages discoverable there? Of 
hearts made by the Almighty God, I will not believe such a thing." 
— Past and Present, Book IV., chap. iv. 

P. 189. St. George's Guild. Mr. Ruskin says that, although the 
Creed of St. George is to be broad enough to include all God-fearing 
persons, the laws are to be distinctively Christian. 

P. 191. The Project. This beautiful modern vision of the Ideal 
State should be carefully compared with More's " Utopia," Bacon's 
** New Atlantis," and Campanella's " City of the Sun." It is interest- 



256 JOHN BUSKIN. 

ing to note that, while in every century men of letters have delighted 
themselves with dreams of social perfection, it is only the man of the 
nineteenth century who tries to transmute his ideal into practical 
reality. The partial failure of Mr. Ruskin's noble effort does not 
alter the significance of the fact that the effort should have been 
made. The twentieth century may accomplish that translation of 
ideal into real which it is the glory of our century to have attempted. 

Page 192. This idea of the education of boys is, in some respects, — 
notably in the emphasis placed on physical training, — much like that 
of Milton. Milton plans for boys to become hunters, fowlers, fishers, 
shepherds, gardeners, apothecaries, architects, mariners, engineers, 
anatomists. They are to practise fencing and wrestling and military 
tactics ; they are to gain familiarity with the resources of their own 
country; further, they are to know the great Latin and Greek 
authors ; and, as they grow older, to study the sciences, geography, 
ancient and modern, agriculture (as taught by Latin authors), botany, 
zoology, and elementary medicine. Advanced students are to become 
familiar with ethics, classical and Biblical, with economics, and with 
the great modern literatures. 

Ruskin's ideas also owe something to the old Persian method, by 
which noble youths were taught "to ride and speak the truth." 

'* We once," says Ruskin, " taught our youths to write Latin verses, 
and called them educated ; now we teach them to leap and to row, to 
hit a ball with a bat, and call them educated." 

Mr. Ruskin, before his illness, was planning to write for St. 
George's schools, "Studies in the History of Christendom, for Boys 
and Girls who have been held at its Fonts." " The Bible of Amiens" 
was the only portion completed. 

In this idea of memorial song night and morning, Mr. Ruskin, 
curiously enough, reproduces the plan of the great Frenchman, 
Auguste Comte, whom he cordially dislikes. 

P. 195. This^ concluding passage may serve, indeed, as a summary 
of the essential phases, critical and constructive, of Mr. Ruskin's 
social theories. For his conception of the duty and office of the 
clergy, see " Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds," the lecture 
on Kings' Treasuries in " Sesame and Lilies," and Letter XIII. in 
" Time and Tide." 



NOTES. 257 



RUSKIN THE TEACHER OF ETHICS. 

Page 198. '* I've stubbed Thurnaby Waaste," are the proud words 
of Tennyson's old Northern Farmer — a man after Ruskin's own heart 
— reviewing his past life on his deathbed : — 

"Dubbut looke at the waaste : tbeer warn't not feead for a cow; 
Nowt at all but bracken an' fuzy, an' looke at it now — 
Warnt worth nowt a haacre, an' now theer's lot's o' feead, 
Fourscoor yows upon it an' some on it doon i' seead." 

P. 201. A reference to the " Phaedrus " of Plato : — "Let us say 
that the soul resembles the combined efficacy of a pair of winged 
steeds and a charioteer. ... Of these horses he [the charioteer] finds 
one generous and of generous breed, the other of opposite descent 
and opposite character. And thus it necessarily follows that driving 
in our case is no easy or agreeable work ; . . . for they [the chariots] 
are burdened by the horse of vicious temper, which sways and sinks 
them towards the earth, if haply he has no good training from his 
charioteer. Whereupon there awaits the soul a crowning pain and 
agony. For . . . that [soul] which follows a god most closely, and 
resembles him most nearly, succeeds in raising the head of its chari- 
oteer kito the outer region, and is carried round with the immortals 
in their revolution, though sorely encumbered by its horses, and barely 
able to contemplate the real existences; while another rises and sinks 
by turns, his horses plunging so violently that he can discern no more 
than a part of these existences. But the common herd follow at a 
distance, all of them, indeed, burning with desire for the upper world; 
but, failing to reach it, they make the revolution in the moisture of 
the lower element, trampling on one another, and striking against 
one another, in their efforts to rush one before the other. Hence 
ensues the extremest turmoil and struggling and sweating; and herein, 
by the awkwardness of the drivers, many souls are maimed, and many 
lose many feathers in the crush ; and all after painful labour go away 
without being blessed by admission to the spectacle of truth, and 
thenceforth live on the food of mere opinion. ... I divided every 
soul into three parts, two of them resembling horses, and the third a 
charioteer. . . . That horse of the two which occupies the nobler 
rank is in form erect and firmly knit, high-necked, hook-nosed, white- 
colored, black-eyed ; he loves honour with temperance and modesty. 



258 JOHN UUSKIN, 

and, a votary of genuine glory, he is driven, without stroke of the 
whip, hy voice and reason alone. The bad horse, on the other hand, 
is crooked, balky, clumsily put together, with thick neck, short throat, 
flat face, black coat, gray and bloodshot eyes, a friend to all riot and 
insolence, shaggy about the ears, dull of hearing, scarce yielding to 
lash and goad united. Whenever, therefore, the driver sees the sight 
which inspires love, . . . the obedient horse, yielding then as ever to 
the check of shame, restrains himself; . . . but the other pays heed 
no longer to his driver's goad or lash, but struggles on with unruly 
bounds, and doing all violence to his yoke-fellow and master. . . . 
And when he is recovered from the pain which the bit inflicted, and 
has with difficulty regained his breath, [he] breaks out into railing at 
his master and his comrade for their treacherous cowardice ; ... he 
stoops his head and gets the bit between his teeth, and drags them on 
incontinently. But the driver experiences the same sensation as at 
first ; backward he falls like racers at the barrier, and, with a wrench 
still more violent than before, pulls back the bit from between the 
teeth of the riotous horse, thereby drenching his jaws and railing 
tongue with blood, and bruising against the ground his legs and 
haunches, consigns him to anguish. But as soon as, by this treatment 
oft repeated, the evil horse is recovered from his vice; he follows with 
humbled steps the guidance of his driver, and at the sight of the fair 
one is consumed with terror. So that then, and not till then, does it 
happen that the soul of the lover follows his beloved with reverence 
and awe/'—Phsedrns, Plato, Wright's Translation. 

Page 202. The " Wrath of Achilles," with which the Iliad opens, 
was caused by the injustice whereby the hero had been robbed of his 
fair captive. So ^neas exclaims in conflict that he is but the instru- 
ment of the righteous anger of Pallas. 

P. 204. "This your fair city" is, of course, Oxford, to whose 
students this lecture was delivered. 

P. 205. "Qui non accepit," Ps. xxiv. 4, to the end of the passage. 
This selection illustrates Buskin's beautiful and half-instinctive use 
of the Bible. 

P. 208. Compare Carlyle : "Liberty? Thetrueliberty of aman,you 
would say, consisted in his finding out, or being forced to find out, the 
right path, and to walk thereon. To learn, or to be taught, what work 
he actually was able for; and then, by permission, persuasion, and 
even compulsion, to set about doing of the same! That is his true 



NOTES. 259 

blessedness, honour, 'liberty,' and maximum of well-being: if lib- 
erty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. . . . Liberty 
requires new definitions." — Past and Present, Book III., ch. xiii. 

In Lecture VIII. of " Val d'Arno," Ruskin gives some beautiful 
hints concerning his ideas of true liberty or " franchise." 

Page 220. " Let Alone," or " Laisser Aller,'' is the great watchword 
of the Manchester school of economics and politics. Its chief expo- 
nent to-day is Herbert Spencer. 
P. 220. Compare Browning: — 

" Rejoice chat man is hurled 
From change to change unceasingly, 
His soul's wings never furled." 

P. 233. " Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of labour, the 
whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the 
instant he sets himself to work ! . . . Blessed is he who has found his 
work: let him ask no other blessedness. . . . Labour is life; from 
the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred, 
celestial life essence breathed into him by Almighty God." — Past 
and Present, Book III., chap. xi. 

P. 235, A reference to the Famine of Orissa (a province of 
India) that occurred in 1866. " During the thirty-five years, from 
1831-1832 to 1866-1867, Government had to remit £257,939 of its 
Orissa rental for droughts alone, or £455,365 for the combined effects 
of droughts and floods. ... In 1770, ten million peasants suffered 
the last agonies of hunger, and one-third of all Bengal lay waste and 
silent for twenty years. ... In 1866 the same province suffered a 
famine equally severe ; but our modern facilities of intercommunica- 
tion, and liberal, though tardy application of money, reduced the 
mortality to less than one-tenth of what it was in 1770, and only seven 
hundred and fifty thousand British subjects died of starvation. One- 
fourth of the whole population of Orissa was, however, swept away." — 
Orissa, by W. W. Hunter, London, 1872. 

P. 241. The modern movement for improved tenements for the 
poor shows that men have at least begun to realize their responsi- 
bilities and their powers in this matter. 

P. 243. Ruskin says that the gist of all his teaching is to be found 
in this passage, from the words "The work of men — and what is 
that ? " 



€i}t ^tubtnt^' §mtB of 

To FURNISH the educational public with -v^ell-edited 
editions of those authors used in or required for 
admission to many of the colleges, the publishers 
announce this new series. The following books are now 
ready, in press, or will be published during 1890 : 

ARNOLD'S SOHRAB AND RUSTUM, and 
WEBSTER'S FIRST BUNKER HILL 
ORATION. By Louise M. Hodgkins, M.A., 
Professor of English Literature, Wellesley College. 

A BALLAD -BOOK, and COLERIDGE'S 
ANCIENT MARINER. By Katharine Lee 
Bates, B.A., Associate Professor of Literature, 
Wellesley College. 

A RUSKIN BOOK, and MACAULAY'S 
ESSAY ON LORD CLIVE. By Vida D. 
ScuDDER, B.A., Literature Department, Wellesley 
College. 

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS. By 
Alfred S. Roe, A.M., Principal of Worcester, Mass., 
High School. 

GEORGE ELIOT'S SILAS MARNER, and 
SCENES FROM CLERICAL LIFE. By 
Mary Harriott Norris, Instructor in English 
Literature, New York City. 

MACAULAY'S SECOND ESSAY ON THE 
EARL OF CHATHAM. By W. W. Curtis, 
A.M., Principal of the Pawtucket, R.I., High School. 

Tentative arrangements have been made for other booJcs 
not ready to he announced, and Teachers of English Literor 
ture are earnestltj requested to correspond freely with us. 

LEACH, SHEWELL, & SANBORN, 

Publishers, . 
BOSTON, NEW YORK, and CHICAGO. 



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